NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Shen Yun Performing Arts performed its 2012 program for the final time at State Theatre on Oct. 27, enchanting the audience with a full display of traditional Chinese culture.
After the performance, the full house audience bestowed the performers with a standing ovation and two curtain calls; additionally, the final vocalist performed an encore.
Sharon Copeland, CEO for Enable Agency, which helps disabled persons, attended and enjoyed the performance.
“It’s wonderful—the dancing is beautiful,” said Ms. Copeland, who also found the costumes lovely.
New York-based Shen Yun has at its core classical Chinese dance, a rich and expressive art form that has been influenced by thousands of years of cultural shifts through dynasties and eras.
“Classical Chinese dance is a culture left to us by the ancients who came before us, its beauty should be riches shared by all of humanity, its purity should not be contaminated,” states the company’s website. “Shen Yun Performing Arts’ dance style is built upon classical Chinese dance as a foundation, while also maintaining a number of ethnic and folk dances. This combination embodies Chinese people’s estheticism and ethnic character.”
Towering behind the dancers, a digitally projected screen shows scenes spanning time and space, “vast open grasslands in one dance to the stately elegance of Tang Dynasty pavilions in another; from dusty yellow battlegrounds to tropical beaches to Himalayan peaks to picturesque scenery of the Yellow River Delta,” according to the website. Award-winning vocalists also accompany the dancers, along with an orchestra that melds both Western and Chinese classical instruments.
Ms. Copeland talked about what touched her the most.
“There’s a predominant scene where good transcends evil, and how people are looking for how to have that experience in their everyday life as well as in their meditative life, and so it’s interesting the way its coming through the dances and the numbers,” she said.
Ms. Copeland was accompanied to the performance by David Hoffman, who works in the pharmaceutical industry.
Mr. Hoffman found the performance a learning experience since so little is known both about modern China and Chinese history.
“I think it’s great that we get exposure in other parts of the world,” he said.
Shen Yun criss-crosses the globe every year, traveling to more than 100 cities. The company has as its mission reviving the 5,000 years of Chinese civilization, a culture with a deep spiritual core, including values such as benevolence, honor, and propriety, as well as a reverence for the gods and the heavens, according to the company’s website.
But because Shen Yun widely shows the true traditional culture—and several scenes of the abusive nature of the Chinese Communist Party and its persecution of the meditation practice Falun Gong—Shen Yun is not presently able to travel to China to perform.
Mr. Hoffman thinks the communist regime has gotten in the way of peace in China.
“The world, for the most part—I'll say 99 percent of the people—we all have the same common interests,” he said. “It’s the government[s] that have different interests. We all want to live in peace and get along with each other and unfortunately governments get in the way sometimes.”
Reporting by Gloria Gao and Zachary Stieber.
New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has three touring companies that perform simultaneously around the world. For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org
The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts
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