PHILADELPHIA—Linda Ives had seen an ad for Shen Yun Performing Arts several months ago and said she wanted to see it, so Phil Rymiszewski got them tickets for her birthday.
“It’s a must-see,” said Mr. Rymiszewski, a vice president in steel, at the Miller Theater the evening of April 15. “It’s awesome. It’s spectacular.”
Ms. Ives, an educator, said, “It’s fantastic. It’s so fantastic.”
New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company, with a mission to revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilization.
Ms. Ives, who has traveled to China and is interested in the culture, was happy to see it brought to life on stage.
“It’s wonderful to shed light on the cultural aspect of China. It’s really beautiful,” she said. “You just think about what the situation is right now, the lack of awareness about the world, of what’s going on in China. So it just sheds light in a beautiful way.”
Mr. Rymiszewski said the dancers had a “true passion for dance.”
“I think that the performance is spectacular. The choreography, the music, everything. The male dancers are incredible,” he said.
Also in the audience was Matthew Lacy, a singer-songwriter, who was deeply moved by the music.
“The opening scene, I had tears in my eyes. I’m very emotional. The emotion that’s in the music—you feel that it’s just more of a—it’s not just a performance. I feel like the people who are performing, they feel very much the culture. There’s a lot of the feeling of something that’s very—seems ancient to me. Something that’s a very deep, deep soul,” he said.
He was fascinated by the traditional Chinese instruments that had a place in the otherwise classically Western orchestra.
“What I really like is the music. Music with the dance and how it just combines together just seamlessly. It’s like perfection,“ he said. ”I’m going to be doing a lot of research when I get home on the music side of it as well.”
Reporting by Tony Dang and Frank Liang.
The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
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