AUSTIN, Texas—Shen Yun Performing Arts was welcomed back for its second performance at The Long Center by a lively audience during the Friday matinee in Austin.
Minister David Culp attended the performance with his wife, Mrs. Merry Culp, and friends, and was impressed with the diversity of the Chinese culture.
The New York-based company’s mission is to revive 5,000 years of Chinese culture, and the performances include ethnic and folk dances from the many regions of China as well as Classical Chinese dances ranging from ancient dynasties to present-day events.
“It’s great, we really like it,” Mr. Culp said. “[There] was a lot of diversity, I like how they tell you the culture through 5,000 years, showing the whole thing.”
“We enjoyed all the pretty colors and the costumes, the backdrop, the way they come out of the background onto the stage,” Mrs. Culp said, adding that she appreciated the emcees’ introductions of the different dances and was learning more about Chinese culture.
“It’s very beautiful, and just the longevity is very interesting, very different from here in the states,” Mr. Culp said. He added that it was interesting to see the spirituality of the culture, and an eye opener because “freedom of belief, we take it for granted here. We worship what we want to, and the situation in China, it’s not very good.”
Chinese culture is believed to be divinely inspired, and as such, from the costumes to the myths, the traditional arts Shen Yun presents all have a touch of the divine. However, this perspective of traditional Chinese culture is not one upheld by China today. One of the dances addressed the persecution of Falun Gong, a peaceful spiritual practice, that is being persecuted in China today.
“I liked the femininity of the women,” Mrs. Culp added. “It’s kind of a nice, refreshing change,” she said of the flowing costumes and graceful movements of the female dancers. Mrs. Culp added that her favorite so far, during the intermission, was the Lotus Leaves dance, where the female dancers made creative use of full-circle fans to depict the large green lotus leaves.
“[The dancers] are obviously very talented; it looked very difficult,” Mr. Culp said of the high leaps, flips, and tumbling techniques he saw the dancers perform, which may resemble gymnastics or acrobatics, but in fact originate from Classical Chinese dance.
Mr. Culp added that he enjoyed the addition of animation, from Shen Yun’s state-of-the-art graphics technology, with the dancers’ characters sometimes first appearing on the backdrop, “then coming to the real life dances.”
Mrs. Culp agreed and particularly enjoyed it in the opening, and thought it nicely “portrayed coming down to earth,” from the initial celestial battle.
Shen Yun has three companies touring the world. Shen Yun Performing Arts New York Company will next perform in San Francisco through Jan. 8.
For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org
The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts
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