PORTLAND—“It’s heavenly. It’s sacred. It’s other-worldly,” said Yvonne Krill, former ballerina with Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, after watching Shen Yun Performing Arts’ opening spectacle at the Keller Auditorium in Portland, Ore., the night of Tuesday, April 2.
“You’ve got to see it to believe it,” she said.
Ms. Krill danced for 10 years and played the part of Clara, a main character, in The Nutcracker Suite with Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. She was also a ballet instructor.
Although Ms. Krill has studied many different ballet techniques, the former ballerina had never encountered Chinese classical dance before, and what she saw at Shen Yun invoked a genuine interest in it.
“I would love to do the Chinese ballet, too, because it is so romantic and flowing,” she said.
Classical Chinese dance is grounded in 5,000 years of divinely inspired culture and is a dance art form built upon a deep foundation of traditional aesthetics. Classical Chinese dance is rich with expressive power, according to Shen Yun’s website.
Ms. Krill was impressed with the coordination between the live orchestra and the dancers. She thought the dancers to be well-disciplined and in sync: “The precision was almost like an army. The movements were just gorgeous,” she said.
“Classical Chinese dance has its own set of training methods in basic skills and has strict training in both physical expression and specific postures. It also involves learning combinations of leaps, turns, flips, spins, and other aerial and tumbling techniques. It is an extensive and independent system of dance,” reads the performance program book.
“The men are very male, and the women just float. I was trying to figure out what their feet were doing,” said Ms Krill. She found all of the positions and jumps to be beautiful.
Ms. Krill also found the performance to be really vibrant. “I love the costumes,” she said. “Wonderful movements.” She was highly impressed with the performance’s aesthetics as well.
“That was sensational—it was so modern,” she concluded.
With reporting by NTD Television and Nataly Teplitsky
New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has three touring companies that perform simultaneously around the world. Shen Yun Performing Arts International Company is performing in Portland, Ore., at the Keller Auditorium, April 2–4. For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org.
The Epoch Times considers Shen Yun Performing Arts the significant cultural event of our time. We have proudly covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
