COSTA MESA, Calif.—John and Nicolette Rubio had tickets to see Shen Yun Performing Arts—but then the pandemic hit, cutting the 2020 season short.
With great anticipation, the Rubios attended the performance at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts on the afternoon of March 4.
“I highly recommend it,” said Mr. Rubio, a vice president of a technology company.
Shen Yun, based in New York, is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company.
“It was phenomenal. Very beautiful. All the dancers were really good, Very good. Very artistic, very creative, and very skilled,“ he said. ”I really enjoyed it ... I enjoyed all of it. And the variety of it as well. The singing, the instruments, the music and choreography with the dancing. All of it.”
Mrs. Rubio added, “It was beautiful. It’s very artistic. There was a lot of feeling and a lot of history.”
“The movement, the colors, the choreography—all of it is amazing,” she said.
She added that she has Greek heritage, and has danced since she was little, prompting her to look in detail at what the dancers were doing, wearing, and how.
“They just glide, they flow. They really do,“ she said. ”It was very beautiful, the way that all the dancers flowed, the choreography and then mixed with the music. I really enjoyed the music as well. The orchestra was great.”
She said she felt “very enlightened. Excited, enthusiastic. Peaceful. It was like a sense of serenity.”
Established in 2006, Shen Yun’s mission is to revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilization through music and dance. Each production consists of over a dozen vignettes, including story-based dances, ethnic and folk dances from China’s 50-plus ethnic minority groups, and musical solos.
Mr. Rubio found many commonalities in this faraway culture, reflected in the performance and the audience.
“I think that there’s a collaboration of cultures and there’s a lot of commonality in the world,” he said. “There’s a lot of things that brought maybe people from all different cultures together.”
Reporting by Jana Li.
The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
