AUCKLAND, New Zealand—Rana Hamida described Shen Yun Performing Arts as an “experience of God.”
Ms. Hamida is an independent artistic director who works with events and festivals, coordinating artists from different mediums of expressions. She is also a singer and dancer. She and Mr. Glenn Hart, a freelance photographer, attended the last of Shen Yun’s five sold-out shows in Auckland on April 23.
“This is like [the] pure magic of bringing together discipline and flow—the feminine flow and creativity, and then the discipline of timing and practice,” she said. “I can see all the discipline that has been put in it, and the focus and the presence. It’s like a moving meditation rather than a performance, so this was so inspiring.
“It’s an experience of God dancing through space and time,” she said. “It’s very amazingly inspiring, [a] showcase of the creative divine.”
“This is a really realistic experience, it’s a really realistic divine experience of life in all aspects. You sometimes feel this elation and beauty and love, and sometimes you feel this pain. But even with the pain, you’re still feeling that sense of peace with all the things that happen.”She praised how well Shen Yun’s music coordinated with the dance on stage.
“To hear the music, the music is really subtle, very subtle energy. Seeing it [in the dance], it’s a very gross physical energy; it’s just a very magical combination between both. The music, the accuracy, the communication between the music and the [dance] movements at the same time. The presence, the accuracy of being together, and that conversation keeps happening at all times. That’s very valuable and precious,” she said.
The Shen Yun Orchestra combines the spirit, beauty, and distinctiveness of Chinese music with the precision and power of the Western symphony orchestra.
Mr. Hart also praised how the music coordinated so seamlessly with the dance on stage.
“The orchestral ensemble as a whole is beautiful ... I was pulled between experiencing what was on stage, the magic through movement, and then pulled into the music as well. I was pulled between two worlds at the same time, which is ultimately one in the same world.
“The nature of the movements with the song, it was so poetic and truly divine.”
He said he cried “at least twice.”
“I got definitely heated, I could feel triggered when the Communist Party came on stage. What I felt was the restriction of freedom, restriction of art as a whole,” he said. “And the journey through that difficulty is what life is about, we restrict, we experience pain and then we transmute it into art in different ways.
“It definitely brought up a lot of emotions and goosebumps. I had goosebumps so many times throughout the performance, it’s incredible.”
Mr. Hart thanked Shen Yun’s artists: “Thank you for your dedication, your devotion. We have an idea of how much effort and energy goes into this. It is a true dedicated path to be able to show up and perform as a musician, as a dancer. Even the amount of hands to create an ensemble, the choreography, the moving parts; so much gratitude for the effort and the willingness to bring this to the world.”
“Please keep bringing [Shen Yun] to everyone,” she said. “Because we can’t comprehend a lot of the divine experiences in life, it’s very important to keep this happening.
“There was something that was coming to me very often as I was watching, is that prohibiting and stopping art, artistic expression, music, and dance, is like a work against God, really.
“[Shen Yun] is a pure experience,” she said. “Please keep doing what you do, and keep offering that to people because we are in a time [where] we really need this ... with all the softness and all the persistence and discipline, and the love you can see so clearly.”
