KITCHENER-WATERLOO, Ontario—Among those praising Divine Performing Arts’ final performance in Kitchener-Waterloo on Wednesday, which closed to a standing ovation, was Member of Parliament Stephen Woodworth.
“It’s wonderful. What’s most impressive to me about the Divine Performing Arts is how it works on so many levels. On the outside you could say that it’s just great entertainment for the whole family—story telling, colourful pageantry, Chinese dance and music.
“If you just go a little deeper, you could see the craftsmanship, the artistry, the discipline, the wonderful detail that’s put into the costumes, and the set design, and the dance composition. And then if you go just a little bit deeper than that, you see that it’s really all about universal values, the ideas of truth, compassion, and tolerance,” he said during intermission.
“These are values that are universal to everyone and it just makes me realize that the more we learn about other cultures the more we find ourselves in them and what a wonderful thing that is, a kind of brotherhood of mankind. So I’m very happy to be here.”
Woodworth received a law degree from the University of Western Ontario after attending Wilfred Laurier University. He now represents Kitchener Centre for the Conservative Party of Canada and is married with three children.
Woodworth was a founding board member and President of Kitchener-Waterloo Extend-a-Family, a non-profit organization that helps families who have a child with a disability. He has been involved with the Knights of Columbus and the Big Brothers Association and is a founding member of the Christian Legal Fellowship. He has also been involved in the Oasis Centre as well as the United Nations Association.
“There is a lot packed into it if you just take a moment to think about it,” he said about the show.
“The flowing sleeves, the human flowers, that kind of artistry has a way of making memories that are so much more real and vivid than you see on a television show or theatre, so it is very very nice to be here.”
Woodworth said he did not have much knowledge of Chinese culture, but found the dance about Tibetans, “Dance of the Snow-Capped Mountain,” particularly interesting because it made him wonder about East-West cultural exchange over the millennia.
“Even the costumes that the Tibetans dancers were wearing reminded me a little of the Cossacks, so I wonder what influences there are on our cultures,” he said.
He said he also enjoyed the Divine Performing Arts orchestra, which combines the rich, full sound of a Western symphony orchestra with traditional Chinese melodies and Chinese instruments, enabling its compositions to at once mine the potential of Western orchestral music and yet be rich in Chinese qualities.
“I was interested to see how those two blended together.”
When asked of there was any program in the first half of the show that had particularly stood out for him, Woodworth named Heaven Awaits Us Despite Persecution, which tells the tale of a father who is persecuted for practicing Falun Gong. The fantastic scenes that ultimately unfold in this piece present a message of hope and bespeak of a longstanding Chinese belief that good people are ultimately rewarded, even if not in this lifetime.
“You know we have always throughout history had examples of religions persecution and it often seems the cruelest kind of persecution because it’s the most gentle people who are oppressed. It reminded me of something that Gandhi once said, it is that ‘There will always be tyrants and murderers among us but they will pass, truth and love will endure forever.’ That too is a part of this show, that in fact we do rise above persecution and there are spiritual values which will in the end overcome, and that is a very uplifting and heroic message.”
“I wish this program every success. In today’s day in our country, there are fewer and fewer things that you really can take the whole family to but I know that people of all ages would enjoy this show,” he said, thanking Divine Performing Arts from coming to Kitchener-Waterloo.
Divine Performing Arts will continue on to Toronto for a six-day run at John Bassett Theatre from January 8 to 14 before going on to Montreal.
The full-house that saw the show Tuesday gave the performance a standing ovation.
For more information please visit DivinePerformingArts.org
