MELBOURNE, Australia—Shen Yun brought a sense of calm and peace to Yunuen Perez and Dorothy Luk when they came to Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Arts Centre Melbourne, State Theatre, on Feb.27

Ms. Perez, is an events coordinator for the National Gallery of Victoria and a production designer.

With a keen eye for production design she appreciated the visual display on stage.

Shen Yun uses state-of-the-art animated digital backdrops to transport the audience from Mongolian plains to Tibetan Alps, from breath taking landscapes to heavenly realms.

“It’s a very unique production. Technically, it’s outstanding. Really fantastic!” she said. “I really like the interaction with the multimedia component, which makes it whimsical. Aesthetically, it’s rich.”

The Shen Yun orchestra brings together two of the world’s great classical music traditions, Chinese and Western resulting in a glorious fusion which touches the hearts of the audience.

Ms. Perez said, “the music’s beautiful, very melodic and very peaceful, very calming. It kind of goes into each dancer. It’s not a striking sound, it’s very calming. It’s beautiful.

She thought the music, the dancers, the costumes and the backdrop worked in perfect harmony.

“It’s just harmonious throughout. It’s seamless.”

China is made up of many ethnic cultures some of which were depicted in the dances, telling many tales from yesteryear to present day.

“The costumes are beautiful, and what I really like is the combination of really stylish and very intimate dances with the ethnic and folkloric take. It’s phenomenal, said Ms. Perez.

As a production designer she was blown away by the sheer scale of the performance and all that it encompassed. Especially when she learnt that Shen Yun produces all new programs each year.

Shen Yun is based in New York. Since its inception in 2006 it has rapidly grown to four companies touring the world simultaneously.

Ms. Perez was amazed at what Shen Yun was able to create. she said it was a in a once in a lifetime phenomenon.

“Incredible! Absolutely fantastic! To achieve what they achieve, amazing!”

Ms. Luk, an events administrator, for the National Gallery of Victoria also loved the performance.

“Excellent, fantastic. The dancers are so skilled and they are all very precise and altogether and the costumes are amazing. I love it,” she said.

“They are just so skilled and I just love the movements. Just watching it, it’s so peaceful.”

‘Very Gracious’

Sherwyn Rogers, came to the performance with her daughter Paula, and great niece Olivia Spinley who is studying contemporary dance.

As a dancer Ms. Spinley was very impressed with how the dancers conveyed the stories through graceful movement’s and emotional expressions.

“They’re very gracious how they move. The way they elongate their bodies but keep posture, so it’s interesting,” she said.

“Very emotional faces, that’s how they portray the story across to the audience, they’re very good at that. Every story that they told you could see it in their face, and their eyes just lit up and told the story.”

Ms. Spinley was impressed with how they each danced their own dance while at the same time appeared to be part of a greater body dancing in unison.
“Very good technique. They’re very disciplined, they’re very much in unison, so they can work together in one piece. It looks very amazing.”

Paula was pleased to learn more about the Chinese culture especially the different ethnic dances.

“I really liked it. It was very good. I got to learn a bit more about traditional Chinese culture. I was really interested in the traditional folk dances and the different ethnics,” she said.

Paula was particularly taken with the erhu, a 4,000 year old two string instrument that often surprises audience with its expressiveness and powerful emotion.

“Very emotional—And the fact that it’s only got 2 strings and it gets that huge range of music from it, it’s fantastic.”

Ms. Rogers really loved the dancers. She said, “I thought it was great. I thought they were very athletic, very light on their feet. I thought they were very clever. Just very clever.”

‘It was perfect, perfect’

Vimal Hariharin was at the same performance, he loved what he saw.

“I was blown away by it. It was perfect, perfect.”

Mr. Hariharin said he danced professionally for six years before changing professions.

“The moves were perfect, they were all the same, as though they were one. And the spins and the throws and the jumps, I was blown away, I was blown away,” he said.

“Every single move of her had some sort of expression that I could read through. So, that was pretty cool.”

Mr. Hariharin also observed that the inner feelings were expressed through the dancers’ physical movements.

He felt Shen Yun had a message of good versus bad, and he thought this was very relevant in today’s society.

“I'd definitely come back next year,” he said.

Reporting by Steve Xu, Julia Huang and Margo MacVicar

New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has four touring companies that perform around the world. For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org.

Epoch Times considers Shen Yun Performing Arts the significant cultural event of our time. We have proudly covered audience reaction since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006