CHICAGO— “I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it,” said Anette Trubowicz about Shen Yun Performing Arts. She attended, on April 4, at the Civic Opera House with her daughter Magda Herron.
“It’s beautiful, aesthetic, very artistic, music, everything!” Ms. Trubowicz, a paralegal and translator of Russian and Polish said. “Gorgeous.”
“Oh, I loved it! So amazing, just beautiful, the artistry, the costumes, everything,” her daughter agreed. Ms. Herron is a model and yoga instructor.
“And the stories, the stories are fantastic,” Ms. Trubowicz said.
“Through the universal language of music and dance, Shen Yun weaves a wondrous tapestry of heavenly realms, ancient legends, and modern heroic tales, taking you on a journey through 5,000 years of Chinese culture. Its stunning beauty and tremendous energy leave audiences uplifted and inspired,” is a statement that appears on Shen Yun’s website.
Ms. Trubowicz enjoyed learning about classical Chinese dance from the bilingual emcees who introduce each of the 20 or so short dance programs.
“Fantastic, and I like where the guy said … if you have the impression that this is like an acrobatic dance, it’s not. It’s very traditional classic, which is wonderful,” she said.
Classical Chinese dance contains aerial flips, spins and leaps which add athleticism to the dancing and helps make it one of the most challenging systems to master.
“And the colors, you know, the traditional colors, they are just so beautiful, and the ornaments,” Ms. Herron said. She was referring to the hundreds of handmade costumes that adorn the dancers.
“And those spiritual meanings, … that’s so beautiful the message that they are sending,” Ms. Trubowicz said.
Perhaps the most heartwarming aspect of the performance for these ladies was its spirituality.
Sen Yun’s website has written, “Throughout history almost every culture looked toward the divine for inspiration. Art was meant to uplift, bringing joy to both the people who created and experienced it. It is this principle that drives Shen Yun performers and their art.”
“We’re very spiritual, you know, God believing, God fearing people, and this really shows that our beliefs are exactly the same, in a spiritual sense, like heaven, the higher power Divinity,” Ms. Herron said.
“It’s wonderful, it’s beautiful, and it’s so sad that they cannot practice this [in] China,” Ms. Trubowicz said.
Based in New York, Shen Yun Performing Arts was formed by a group of leading classical Chinese artists who aimed to revive China’s divinely-inspired culture—a culture almost destroyed after decades of communist rule in China.
Ms. Trubowicz appreciated how the colors made so very clear the spiritually positive versus negative. “When you pray, when you’re spiritual, everything is in color, and then it’s a dark side, immediately,” she said.
But despite the darkness, Ms. Herron said the show was absolutely positive. “Very positive and beautiful—you know, you leave here happy. It’s not like you leave here, ‘Oh I’m depressed.’ No! You leave and you’re in a good mood,” she said, because “the good always prevails.”
Both ladies would highly recommend the performance.
At first, Ms. Herron wondered what she could possibly say to capture this performance: “You don’t need any information before you go in. It’s so beautifully laid out and not only is it a beautiful message, but the visual aspect goes even beyond that so even if you’re not into … the spiritual and the story, just looking at it visually is stunning, intriguing, and interesting,” she said.
“The music, the colors and the dance, wow!” Ms. Trubowicz said.
Reporting by Sophie Wang and Sharon Kilarski
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
