SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Shen Yun Orchestra: ‘Breathtaking’ Says Flutist

Feb 27, 2014
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Shen Yun Orchestra: ‘Breathtaking’ Says Flutist
Clint and Heidi Condie had more than an evening out—5,000 years of Chinese culture by Shen Yun at Mead Theatre, on Feb. 26. (Ying Wan/Epoch Times)

DAYTON, Ohio—“We loved it! It was stunning. It was so beautiful,” said Heidi Condie about Shen Yun Performing Arts Touring Company who attended the performance with her husband, Clint.

Shen Yun’s mission is to revitalize 5,000 years of true and divinely inspired Chinese culture through storytelling dance and song about beloved myths, legends, and past and current history.

Mr. Condie, a Continuous Improvement Leader for a 150 year old company dedicated to feeding the world, appreciated experiencing this culture. “It was really neat to see the different parts of Chinese culture and history. I liked that.”

“I’m a flutist, so I loved the music,” said Ms. Condie. “It was breathtaking-how they combined the Chinese instruments with the Western music. It was beautiful! It was very exciting. I haven’t heard that combination before.”

“The Shen Yun Orchestra masterfully blends two of the world’s greatest classical music traditions. Ancient Chinese instruments such as the soul-stirring erhu and the delicate pipa lead with a full orchestra of Western strings, percussion, woodwinds, and brass,” states the company’s website. This combination creates a dramatic new sound.

“It all fit together,” said Mr. Condie and his wife agreed and followed with: “Several times, I thought, ‘Oh, I want the music so I can play it, and make duets out of it for my students.’”

Mrs. Condie describes herself as lucky to be able to be a stay at home mother with four children. She was trained in flute in college and continues the art by teaching children to play.

Each Shen Yun performance includes some 16 presentations of dance and music, and 3 vocal soloists depicting stories from China’s past and present. According to the website, each story or song expresses cherished virtues of traditional Chinese culture, and has a message or moral to teach.

Mr. Condie liked many aspects of Shen Yun: “the colors, the art, the history, and being able to learn something I didn’t know about already. It’s really nice.”

“Just the culture, the Chinese beliefs in the past, it was very interesting,” said Ms. Condie.

According to the program, “China was once known as the Divine Land, its glorious culture said to have been brought down from the heavens. But under the last 60 years of atheist communist rule, this divinely inspired culture has been almost completely destroyed.” Shen Yun’s mission is to revive true Chinese culture.

Reporting by Ying Wan and Cat Rooney

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

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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