MONTREAL—Shen Yun Performing Arts has attracted a loyal fan base since its inception in 2006, and many come to the performance every year to experience the all-new lineup debuted each season.
Carole Hamelin is one such repeat customer. The former stage designer/producer and classical ballet dancer attended the performance at Place des Arts on Jan. 11, for her fourth time.
“I really love it and each year it’s different,” said Ms. Hamelin. “I like the harmony, the colours, the ensemble—everything. It’s very beautiful.”
“I hope Shen Yun comes for many, many, many, more years.”
What keeps her coming back is the dancers’ heart and obvious devotion to preserving traditional Chinese culture, values, and spiritual beliefs, she said. New York-based Shen Yun has a mission to revive the 5,000-year-old divinely inspired Chinese culture through classical Chinese music and dance.
“There’s something inside each dancer that we can feel when they dance; they really believe in [their mission],” said Ms. Hamelin. “It’s very good to see them dance, because it’s not just dancing, its dancing from the soul, and I love that.”
Many of the Shen Yun performers practice an ancient Chinese meditation called Falun Dafa. Rooted in traditional Chinese culture, it centres around three core principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
“The root of Falun Dafa that we can feel from each one of the dancers—that’s what I feel inside and I really connect with that,” said Ms. Hamelin, who teaches mindfulness meditation to companies, groups, and individuals.
Shen Yun features a collection of vignettes or story-based dance and folk dance during the performance. They portray ancient Chinese myths and legends in addition to contemporary real-life events, always with a lesson to be learned from traditional Chinese culture.
Ms. Hamelin appreciated the modern-day stories of human rights abuses in China, saying it was a timely and effective format to raise awareness.
“It’s a good way to teach the world, what’s going on in the country,” she said. “It’s a good way to transcend [persecution] and to bring the world a new way of thinking, [through] the dance and the music, and culture.”
The tri-lingual emcees, who introduce each story-dance in French, English, and Mandarin, added a lot to the performance, said Ms. Hamelin, and really helped the audience understand the culture more deeply.
“I really love the two [emcees], they really take good care of us, to introduce every piece,” she said.
Ms. Hamelin highly recommended the “unique and beautiful” performance: “Just go and see it!” she said.
Reporting by NTD Television and Justina Wheale
New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has four touring companies that perform around the world. Shen Yun’s International Company will continue on to Quebec City for two performances on Jan. 13 and 14. For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org
Epoch Times considers Shen Yun Performing Arts a significant cultural event of our time. We have proudly covered audience reaction since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
