WASHINGTON—The Divine Performing Arts (DPA) New Year Spectacular continued to amaze audiences the evening of Friday, Feb. 13, at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House. DPA performed to a full house and received a standing ovation at the close of the program.
After the show Ms. Govoni, a graphic designer and fine artist, shared her impressions.
“Oh, it was fantastic. It was like a visual meditation, because you just become mesmerized, and the message itself is so uplifting, and it makes you think about life and about the beyond and our lives and all the lives that we’ve lived. ... So it really is thought-provoking and ecstatically incredible, and the music is so powerful.
“When the curtain went up, I gasped. I was like ‘ah’ because of the costumes, the color, all the clouds, and what have you, so as an artist, it’s so visual, and the music is incredible …”
The opening program Ms. Govoni refers to, The Five Millennia Begin, tells the legend of heavenly beings descending to earth to establish 5,000 years of Chinese civilization.
“To see people [dancing] and telling stories—the story-telling without hearing any words through just the movements of their bodies was so amazing, and you really could get the story just by watching.
“The flowers were ‘eye-opening’ and just watching the people being flowers and the fans being flowers, how they used the chopsticks, how they used the fans, how they used just fabric. I said ‘Oh my gosh! The fabric budget must have been incredibly huge.’
“The colors I noticed too. I was watching how there was turquoise and then there was beige and then there was orange, and just the way the colors [were combined]. And I loved the backgrounds too. … You’d have the dancing, and then the [dancers] would go off to the screens in the back [which] would then take them up to heaven, or take them off to somewhere [as little figures], so I thought that was really interesting, how the foreground and the background worked so well together.”
DPA’s touring presentation of Chinese classical dance will be at the Kennedy Center through Sunday, February 15.
For more information please visit DivinePerformingArts.org
NTDTV contributed to this report
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