He described the energy coming from the stage as a bright light that engages, centers, and focuses the viewer.
“The whole picture: you got the contemporary, the ancient, the nature, the heavens, it’s really quite a composite of a lot of different things,” he said.
Shen Yun, based in New York, has been presenting 5,000 years of China’s traditional, divinely inspired culture to audiences since 2006. It has performed on the world’s most prestigious stages, bringing stories of ancient times to life using classical Chinese dance.Mr. Hamby called the performance “absolutely beautiful.”
“As far as visually, the cast has the ability to be larger than life,” he said. “When you’re looking at people that are the same size as me, [but] their gestures are so big, and the costumes and the colors, it’s almost like [you] feel the waves of energy coming at you.”
He said he also shares the values presented in Shen Yun, such as truthfulness and compassion.
When he saw the ads for this season’s Shen Yun to experience “China before communism,” Mr. Hamby said he thought, ‘That’s a pretty bold statement to put out there. And so it really interested me.”
After seeing Shen Yun, he said he felt “a release, like some weight had been lifted. I feel really happy and joyous.”
“In Greeley, Colorado, it’s so impressive to see so many people wanting to come see this show, that talks about that renewed hope and that compassion. And that is just really enlightening and inspirational to me, when I look around that theater throughout the show.”
‘There’s a love of life and the Divine’
Alan Sterns, engineer for a systems engineering company, said he found the colors in the performance beautiful, and the choreography fantastic.
“The music is really well written for the performances and I really enjoy it,” he added.
Sterns also commented on how he learned more about China through Shen Yun.“I’ve learned a lot about the traditional Chinese culture; and I’ve never thought of dance being part of Chinese culture, because what we see on the media, they seem somber and like they don’t enjoy life, but the dance—the different regional dances really brought out that yes, there’s a love of life and the Divine and it’s really enlightening,” he said.
“I think it would be a great place for almost any age—children all the way up to the elderly; it’s a way to learn.”
Spiritual Themes in Shen Yun
John Thomas works for the University of Nebraska as an extension educator, teaching about agriculture.
“I’ve truly enjoyed it,” Mr. Thomas said about Shen Yun. “And I appreciate the struggle that they’ve talked about, of how some of this freedom is being oppressed in places in our world.”
As a Christian, he said he appreciated the spiritual themes in Shen Yun.
“It talks about a concept of heaven and a concept of God and a concept of a creator, and so that’s spirituality,” he said. “And atheism and humanism try to deny that.”
He added that he was happy to see that theatergoers are enjoying a day out when “people’s liberties are being robbed during this pandemic.”
“I think people need to be free ... This is refreshing. People are gathering together by the hundreds. And we need that, we need to come out of this pandemic, weird lockdown state, and be free to enjoy things like this.”
Reporting by Nancy Ma and Sally Sun.The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
