SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Shen Yun a Glimpse Into Chinese History

Jan 05, 2015
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Shen Yun a Glimpse Into Chinese History
Jeff Nelson attends Shen Yun Performing Arts at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday, Jan. 4, 2015. (Chiawei Lin/Epoch Times)

SAN JOSE, Calif.—Jeff Nelson, a business development manager at the Center for Elders’ Independence (CEI), found Shen Yun Performing Arts’s traditional dance and music performance very interesting.

“It is fascinating,” Mr. Nelson said. “The dancing and the outfits, the costumes ... [are all] very colorful, very vibrant.”

Mr. Nelson attended Shen Yun Performing Arts’s final performance at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday.

A Shen Yun performance, in its unique artistic form, creates mesmerizing stories, depicting them through dance drama. Mr. Nelson said he did not know much about the Chinese history and the stories enacted on the stage were all new for him.

He was also impressed with Shen Yun’s state-of-the-art digital backdrops.

“I like the backdrops, this is the first show I’ve seen where they interact with the backdrops like that. It is all very interesting,” he said.

Shen Yun’s grand, animated backdrops innovatively blend with the performing dancers and give a unique effect of expanding the stage, making the performers appear to move in and out of the screen, thus taking the audiences for journey to a whole new dimension.

“It is a really unique use of CGI [Computer Generated Imagery] and special effects. It is very good,” he said.

Mr. Nelson said that he was not aware that the Chinese Communist Party has banned Shen Yun from performing in China.

“I had no idea that this was banned in China, and this is only something they can do outside the country,” Mr. Nelson said.

“So it is really interesting to get a glimpse of the history.”

Shen Yun explains on its website that the Chinese Communist Party, officially an atheist regime, has for decades launched various campaigns, most notably the Cultural Revolution, to destroy cultural sites, temples, relics, and also the Chinese people’s faith in the divine.

Based in New York, Shen Yun Performing Arts mission is to use performing arts to revive the essence of 5,000 years old Chinese culture; a culture which is traditionally considered as a divinely inspired civilization.

“Shen Yun seeks to revive these virtues the world over,” Shen Yun states on its website.

Reporting by Chiawei Lin and Arshdeep Sarao

New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has four touring companies that perform simultaneously around the world. 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.

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