HAMILTON, Canada—The Kinchlea family was captivated by the opening performance of Shen Yun Performing Arts at Hamilton Place on Dec. 27.
“We loved it,” said Karen Kinchlea, a piano teacher.
“I loved the music,” she continued, pointing out that she particularly enjoyed the solo performance of the two-stringed instrument, erhu, also known as the “Chinese violin.”
“I found that it just evoked emotions and [the erhu player] could do a lot with those two strings. Absolutely impressed.”
Based in New York, Shen Yun travels the world each year with a completely new program of classical Chinese dance and music.
The music that accompanies the dances is performed live by the Shen Yun Orchestra, which combines traditional Chinese instruments with a Western classical orchestra.
“I thought that the musicians were fantastic. The dynamics in the music really blew me away actually,” Ms. Kinchlea said.
“The harmony between all of the different instruments was absolutely fantastic.”
Richard Kinchlea, chair of the Emergency Management & Public Safety department at the Centennial College, said he also highly enjoyed the performance.
“The pageantry of the history and how it was all nicely choreographed together, it was beautiful,” Mr. Kinchlea said.
He said the use of the animated backdrops was very well done, in particular in some of the dance pieces where characters flew in and out of the scenes to suddenly appear on the stage.
“The background was great. I really loved how they integrated the live [dancers] into the background and then back again. It was awesome,” he said.
The Kinchleas’ daughters, Sarah and Kiersten, shared their parents’ admiration of the performance.
“I thought it was fascinating, it was really amazing,” Sarah said.
Reporting by Xinxin Teng
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.
