‘Everyone Is Dancing With Their Souls’: Former Ballerina Applauds Shen Yun
Jan 09, 2023
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Sheefa Stawski enjoyed Shen Yun’s matinee at the AT&T Performing Arts Center, on Jan. 8, 2023. (Nancy Ma/The Epoch Times)
DALLAS—As a former classical ballerina, Sheefa Stawski didn’t know what to expect when she arrived for Shen Yun’s matinee at the AT&T Performing Arts Center on Jan. 8. After the show, Ms. Stawski said she was wowed by the dancers’ skills.
“I was concentrated. Every movement means a lot to me. Every finger, every hand—how they drop it, how they danced and jumped,” she said, “their marvelous skills are beyond what I have ever seen. It was magnificent. They performed wonderfully.”
Shen Yun Performing Arts is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance and music company. Through vibrant dance pieces and solo performances, Shen Yun artists seek to revive China’s 5,000 years of culture and share with everyone the beauty of pre-communist China.
Accompanying Ms. Stawski in the afternoon was Mr. Shri Kumar, a traditional Indian dancer. He was touched by the spirit of Shen Yun artists as they danced.
“[There were] divine elements there. I saw that [the dancers] were very enlightened and joyous from the inside. That is the most important thing. They were doing it from the heart,” he said.
“Everyone was dancing with their souls. It’s incredible,” Ms. Stawski added.
In addition to portraying ethnic and folk dances from various regions of China, Shen Yun includes story-based dances that tell tales from ancient times to the modern day.
Ms. Stawski said that was an aspect she had not expected to see in the performance. “It was incredible for us to understand what they were expressing in their dance with the music and the backdrop. It was amazing.”
The Brown family attended Shen Yun’s performance in Dallas, on Jan. 8, 2023. (Yawen Hung/ The Epoch Times)
Also in the audience were Michael Brown, the executive director of the Dallas Independent School District, and his family.
Mr. Brown thought Shen Yun’s performance was excellent and very educational for children. “It was outstanding. I think it shines a light on a different side of China that we don’t necessarily get to see.”
Mr. Brown said his son Nicolas took a Mandarin course in junior high school, and it was wonderful for him to now have traditional Chinese art and music to associate with the language he had learned.
For Nicolas, what he loved most in the performance were the comedic story dances and the songs of Shen Yun vocalists. “[The backdrop] with the subtitles shows you what they’re singing. That’s pretty cool,” he said, “I really like how [Shen Yun] changes it up each year so that [we] can go see it again and again.”
According to its website, Shen Yun releases an all-new set of programs every year, so each time the audience returns they are greeted with a brand-new performance.
Reporting by Nancy Ma, Yawen Hung, and Jennifer Tseng.
