CLEVELAND—Judy Nystrom and her daughter Lauren enjoyed the exposure to Chinese culture they experienced through seeing Shen Yun Performing Arts at the State Theatre on Feb. 1.
“It was wonderful. We had not been to anything similar to this before,” said Ms. Nystrom, president and CEO of Legacy Staffing and Legacy MedStaff. She was recognized as one of Cleveland’s Top Business Executives in 2011.
Shen Yun aims to bring 5,000 years of divinely inspired, traditional Chinese culture back to life through dance and music. This culture was nearly lost under communist rule in China, states the Shen Yun website.
“It was really amazing,” said Lauren. “They did a really good job-doing everything. They had really cool special effects. I thought it was great.”
Mini-dance dramas, orchestral music, and opera-style soloists tell stories of heroism and virtue from ancient Chinese history to today. Each performance is introduced by bi-lingual emcees in both English and Chinese.
“It was really neat to have the translation, and a nice mix of opera and just performing arts. A lot of different cultural things … brought it all together, and still telling a story of things that not all of us understand if we don’t see it in the arts,” said Ms. Nystrom.
“There weren’t a lot of things like this to come and see when I was growing up,” explains Ms. Nystrom. “I definitely like to expose my daughter to a lot more cultural things.”
She noted that for theater productions: “We’ve seen so many different performances, and this is definitely one of the more interesting ones that we’ve seen, all pieced together in a different way.
Laura concluded she would like to invite her friends to the show.
Reporting by NTD Television and Nicholas Zifcak
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.
