MEXICO CITY—Gabriel Martell, the director of GMartell School of Music Production, experienced Shen Yun Performing Arts for the first time on May 7, catching one of the last performances of the 2023 season and the last one at the Auditorio Nacional in Mexico City. He left inspired.
“This is precisely what music is, like the medium of universal language, so it is the best way to understand a culture so different from the Mexican culture,” he said. “Something that I personally admire a lot about Shen Yun is the perfectly integrated fusion between the Western instruments and the instruments of Chinese origin, but in a perfect fusion. We recommend all our students of the University of Music to come and see the show.”
New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company, currently wrapping up its 2023 world tour of nearly 200 cities.
Along with reviving the ancient dance form, Shen Yun is noted in the performing arts community for pioneering many other aspects: an orchestra that blends East and West, as Mr. Martell noticed, and an innovative backdrop technology, among other things.
Mr. Martell said the music of Shen Yun conveyed three principles to him.
“Which are truth, benevolence, and tolerance,” he said.
“They are values of a higher order that, in my university, I also plan to integrate in the practice and the training of our students,” he added.
He learned that the Shen Yun artists live by these principles. “They are very fortunate to work in this show, yes, because I can perceive that it is not only a discipline but a way of life.”
He felt many deeper themes in Shen Yun were universal.
“Of very high level, in that, I also find an integration between the Western culture, that in our case comes from the Greek culture, that in the Western culture, the human being has three elements: the body, the mind, and the spirit, and I see that here there is congruence with the Chinese culture,” he said.
Mr. Martell added that Shen Yun’s production “combines dance, theater, music, and singing very well; it is not just a show, but it is very educational.”
“Personally, I was very inspired,” he said.
Reporting by Lily Yu.
The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
