WASHINGTON—Floyd Mori, national executive director of the Japanese American Citizen League (JACL), saw Shen Yun Touring Company on March 21, and said, “As you look at the precision and the enthusiasm with which the performers perform, it is just wonderful.”
“We can see different kind of talents, talents that we don’t usually see. It was very entertaining,” said Mr. Mori, at the Kennedy Center Opera House.
“It was great,” he said. Mr. Mori said as a young man he was an athlete, and because of that he could appreciate the dancer’s strength. “I know we see it’s dancing, but there is a lot of athletic abilities and strength required to do the kind of dancing that they did.”
New York-based Shen Yun presents colorful and exhilarating performances of classical Chinese dance and music-with an entirely new lineup of dances, songs, and musical scores every year, according to Shen Yun’s website.
Mr. Mori said, “You know it is important that we all preserve culture and culture helps us to appreciate who we are. I think Chinese are very proud to have this kind of arts preserved and maintained.”
Shen Yun’s mission is to revive and restore the 5,000-year old traditional Chinese culture, nearly destroyed by 60 plus years of communist rule in the country. Shen Yun’s website states that “the deeper spiritual core of the ancient culture, with its values of benevolence, honor, propriety, wisdom, and sincerity, as well as a reverence for the gods and the heavens, cannot be destroyed.”
Mr. Mori felt an affinity with Shen Yun’s mission. He said, “We feel it is very important in our organization that we preserve culture … we have a background with many good values. Particularly arts … it is very important to our ancestry.” The JACL, founded in 1929, is the oldest and largest Asian American civil rights organization in the United States, according to their website.
“It is very good. It is very good to bring back some of the ancient myths, history, and stories of old China,” said Mr. Mori, about the value of reviving traditional Chinese culture.
According to tradition, Chinese culture is divinely inspired. Shen Yun’s website says “In a collection of short pieces, audiences travel from the Himalayas to tropical lake-filled regions; from the legends of the culture’s creation over 5,000 years ago through to the story of Falun Dafa in China today; from the highest heavens down to the dusty plateaus of the Middle Kingdom.”
Reporting by NTD Television and Kelly Ni.
Shen Yun Performing Arts, based in New York, tours the world on a mission to revive traditional Chinese culture. Shen Yun Performing Arts Touring Company will perform at The Kennedy Center Opera House, Washington, D.C., through April 1.
For more information visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org
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