KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan—Shen Yun Performing Arts New York Company’s 2012 premiere in Kaohsiung was a sold-out performance at the Kaohsiung City Cultural Center on the evening of March 12. Deeply moved by Shen Yun’s performance, Mr. Huanwei Li, who runs a trading company, said that the message he got from watching Shen Yun was one of spiritual inspiration. It had broadened his horizons and had given him new insights into the divine, he said.
New York-based Shen Yun, the world’s leading classical Chinese dance and music company, has as its mission the revival of China’s authentic, divinely inspired culture, “which the Chinese Communist Party has for decades tried to destroy: a tradition of spiritual self-discipline and veneration for the divine,” says the company website.
Mr. Li found the performance to be awe-inspiring. “I think it’s really not easy to integrate Chinese culture into the performing arts, but the whole performance was so smooth that the artists must have gone through strenuous and painstaking trainings,” he said.
He was particularly impressed by the program How the Monkey King Came To Be. He said, “Most people are familiar with the story of Journey to the West, and it is great to interpret it in this way.”
Mr. Li was also deeply moved and impressed by Shen Yun’s award-winning solo vocalists. “I think the artistic conception of the lyrics conveyed the idea that the Dharma is omnipresent,” he said. He also believed that through the performing arts one could show that Buddhas do exist.
He said that watching Shen Yun had broadened his mind and enlarged his perspective on life. He said, “What it [Shen Yun] displays is the evolution of history, transcending from the ancient times to the modern society.”
