BRISBANE, Australia—Good news spreads quickly in Brisbane’s multi-cultural community, when they heard about Shen Yun Performing Arts coming so many were keen to see Shen Yun, their ticket buying snowballed from 2 to 20 tickets, as friends formed a large group to go the Saturday evening performance. Shane and Tyler Duran, father and son, were among the excited group of theatregoers at the Lyric Theatre on Feb. 27.
Mr. Duran a contracts officer, felt exhilarated watching the performances. He describes Shen Yun as “visually spectacular and historically interesting.”
“I really enjoyed the show. It was really quite exciting. Quite inspirational actually seeing so much history and culture portrayed within a couple of hours.”
His son Tyler Duran, who practices martial arts and is in first year university studying psychology was also fascinated by the classical Chinese dance techniques he saw on stage.
New York-based Shen Yun “features the world’s foremost classically trained dancers, a unique orchestra blending East and West, and dazzling animated backdrops—together creating one spectacular performance,” according to their website.
The digital backdrop especially impressed Mr. Duran, particularly the interaction between the characters and the background.
“I think it’s all holistically brilliant, how it worked ... They sort of use the video in the background, but then still bringing that into the foreground by different characters flying in and all of a sudden they appear on the stage. That was pretty impressive.”
Despite Shen Yun’s revival of Chinese historical and cultural traditions, it cannot be shown in China today.
Since the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese regime has suppressed traditional culture and the freedom of belief. —most recently the regime’s persecution of Falun Gong, an ancient spiritual discipline and meditation practice centered on truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance.
Mr. Duran personally wanted to thank Shen Yun for touring around the world and promoting a message of hope for the future.
“Thank you for putting that on every year and not tiring of doing that. Putting on or designing new teams every year, sending out those teams around the world, I think whilst they might not be able to do that in China, they are certainly bringing the message to the world,” he said. “And I’m glad they have told the story of the persecution of Falun Gong.”
Reporting by NTD Television and Bowen Xiao
New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has four touring companies that perform simultaneously around the world. For more information, visit Shen Yun Performing Arts.
Epoch Times considers Shen Yun Performing Arts the significant cultural event of our time. We have proudly covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
