SAN JOSE, Calif.—After having seen Shen Yun Performing Arts last year, Mr. Howard Feinberg and Ms. Maurine Thrush were struck once again with how lovely the performance was.
They attended Shen Yun’s evening performance on Jan. 3 at the San Jose Performing Arts Center.
Mr. Feinberg, CEO of a dental and medical technology company, was impressed with the show’s spirituality.
“We see a lot of spirituality in this dancing,” he said. “We’re dancers ourselves, so we see this, and we can connect with this very easily.”
“I like the idea of compassion, too,” Ms. Thrush added.
In the storytelling segment of The Power of Compassion, the audience sees a compelling story of compassion in the face of persecution.
“Even though they were being mean to them,” Ms. Thrush said, “you don’t reply in kind—you change, and be compassionate back. It’s a very good message.”
Classical Chinese dance has a history of thousands of years. The Shen Yun website tells us, “Soaking up profound wisdom from every era and dynasty, it has become a complete system of dance embodying traditional aesthetic principles with its unique dance movements, rhythms, and inner meaning.”
Mr. Feinberg appreciated the connection between Chinese dance and martial arts.
“It’s a nice connection between the two of them,” he said, “we see how all it all ties together.”
Being a dancer himself, Mr. Feinberg said, “We understand, being dancers, how much work actually goes into this, how difficult it is.”
“We know how many hours it takes of work to get that right, and especially with the handkerchief dance,” he said, referring to the dance Handkerchief Blossoms. “There must have been a thousand hours for them to practice that to get that right.”
“So it’s amazing—we love it!” he said.
“Its very, very pretty! Poetic, and it’s interesting just to watch,” Ms. Thrush said. “The costumes were so beautiful, and the unity and the uniformity, to be able to dance like that—we know how much work that takes to do it in unity. So it’s beautiful to watch that.”
Shen Yun also enlivens each dance with a digital backdrop. “With state-of-the-art graphics technology, Shen Yun’s digital-backdrop team creates vividly animated settings, extending the stage and transporting the audience to a world where heaven and earth are one,” according to Shen Yun’s website.
“We loved the ones coming out of the screen,” said Ms. Thrush, referring to some of the pieces where the dancers appear to leap from the backdrop to the stage. “It’s so fun!”
The Shen Yun Orchestra produces unique original musical scores by blending the beautiful sounds of Chinese and Western instruments.
“The music was so beautiful, too,” said Ms. Thrush.
“Many of our friends are in orchestras and on stage,” he said. “We'll tell them to come see it.”
“Come see it, because it’s like nothing they’ve ever seen,” said Ms. Thrush.
Reporting by Gary Wang and Cheryl Casati
New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has four touring companies that perform simultaneously around the world. For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org
The 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.
