GEELONG, Australia—Shen Yun Performing Arts played to a capacity crowd on Saturday afternoon, April 4, and Mr. Chang, trained in classical Chinese dance, was in the audience.
Mr. Chang will be performing with the world-renowned Cirque du Soleil in Melbourne on Thursday, April 9, and was delighted he had the opportunity to watch Shen Yun in Geelong. His personal experience has given him a good understanding of the artistic accomplishment of the Shen Yun company.
He described how he participated in New Tang Dynasty Television’s dance competition held last year in New York, and spoke with a performer from the Shen Yun company while there. Watching the performance brought back familiar feelings and memories, and he praised the company for bringing the beauty of Chinese dance to the world.
“They train very hard. I’ve been to New York and met them. They work hard without complaining. They are melding into Chinese dance itself, to bring the beauty of Chinese dance to the whole world—because Shen Yun is a global performance company, they’re giving the elegance of Chinese dance to the world, letting more people see the beauty of China. This is a divine activity.
“My favourite might be the Mongolian dance [Mongolian Chopsticks] and the Tibetan dance [Dance of the Snow-Capped Mountain], because these are typical tastes from the very original dancing of Chinese culture … You can see all the joy on the dancers’ faces, they are really into it,” he said, smiling.
Mr. Chang was in his element when discussing Chinese dance and was happy to share his thoughts further. “Chinese dance itself has its own unique feeling of beauty, its way of moving the body, its own bearing, its own innate sort of cultural meaning. It fully brings out these Chinese cultural aesthetics. It’s not just beautiful because it’s beautiful, but the 5,000 years of Chinese civilization has so much inner content, with ups and downs, and all sorts of setbacks [that can be drawn on].
“I saw how ... they have given expression to these legendary stories, like Mulan, Yue Fei, and these stories that have the national hero feel about them. They brought these legends out again today. For example, in The Monkey King Triumphs—that was vivid and vigorous.
“When they were introducing this story, asking questions to the audience, many young children all yelled out ‘Monkey King!’ so everyone felt some resonance with this tale. Everyone already knowing about this is excellent, no matter whether they are inside or outside of China.
“Through their efforts, they have given a perfect presentation of the aesthetics and beauty of China ... because there’s no way to present this whole 5,000 years of our Chinese civilization in just one night, so I know Shen Yun is always working so hard, doing this year after year.”
Additional reporting by Jack Liu.
The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of the Shen Yun Performing Arts 2009 World Tour.
For more information please visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org
