“It was spectacular! All the colors, the beautiful movements ... and when the actors and the artists dance, and they tumble, they’re so graceful—it’s almost as if they have wings! I enjoyed it immensely,” said Marcella Lee.

Marcella Lee, a 13-time Emmy winning reporter and news anchor working for KFMB-TV, CBS News, brought her family along to see Shen Yun at the San Diego Civic Theatre on Jan. 25, 2020. Among her family members were her mother and two children.

Shen Yun explores 5,000 years of Chinese culture through classical Chinese dance, and a symphony orchestra blending melodies and harmonies of East and West. China was once known as the Middle Kingdom and was said to have a divinely-inspired culture. New York-based Shen Yun seeks to revive this culture that was once almost lost, and Lee staunchly supported this mission.

“Oh, A-plus,“ she said. ”They get a 100 percent, a 1,000 percent for doing that. You can tell that the people working behind the scenes, the creative directors and the stylistic directors, paid so much attention to detail in really bringing that history to the year 2020. It was just really marvelous.”

Shen Yun’s website states that classical Chinese dance dates back thousands of years, and that dynasty after dynasty it was enriched and refined.

“In China today, it’s regularly mixed with military or modern dance styles to the point that people don’t know what exactly they’re watching. Only Shen Yun performs classical Chinese dance in its purest form, preserving its traditional aesthetic the way it was originally passed down,” states Shen Yun’s website.

Lee said it was almost as if the dancers had strings attached to them and someone was up in the sky lifting them into motion.

“It almost seems not human for them to be able to do what they can do, how high they can jump, how beautifully they can express themselves, almost seems supernatural, so it’s just fantastic,” said Lee.

“Oh, the orchestra was phenomenal. We were so impressed. My kids play piano, so we know classical music, and just to hear all of the Chinese instruments meshing so beautifully with the Western instruments, it was so magical and it matched so well the performers. It was amazing,” said Lee.

“They were mesmerizing, I mean, just beautiful. The way that they move, the flexibility of the artists, and the grace is just like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s really, really become such an amazing show,” said Lee.

Lee first saw a Shen Yun performance in the early days when the company had just begun. She exclaimed how now, Shen Yun has “just exploded into a phenomenon!”

Shen Yun started with just one dance company in 2006, yet with its growing popularity, it has now expanded into seven equally large companies that simultaneously tour around the world each year.

This time, Lee said that celebrating the new year with her family whilst watching Shen Yun, made the performance even more special.

“This was by far the most wonderful way for my family and me to kick off Chinese New Year,” said Lee.