VANCOUVER—Shen Yun Performing Arts captured the hearts of Vancouverites one last time with its final performance of a four-show run at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on Sunday afternoon.
Similar to the previous performances, the Jan. 18 performance was well attended, and audience members applauded and gasped at the beauty of the scenes that unfolded before their eyes.
Peggy Chapman, an administrator in a law firm, liked both the beauty of the performance as well as the storylines told through the show’s mini-drama dance pieces.
“I love it, absolutely love it. The dancing, the backgrounds, everything is fascinating,” she said.
“The storylines are fantastic, and they come really well through in the program, so you know exactly what you are watching as you are seeing it.”
Rina Freed, a senior environmental engineer, was fascinated by Shen Yun’s use of animated digital backdrops. The backdrops depict beautiful scenes, from celestial palaces to vast landscapes, and with intricate timing and great precision, interact with the dances on stage using animation.
“I really enjoyed the animation. I hadn’t seen anything like that. It really captured my imagination, told me the story more. I found that very interesting,” Ms. freed said.
Shen Yun is a world-renowned classical Chinese dance company whose mission is to revive China’s age-old traditional Chinese culture through the performing arts. The New York-based company uses classical Chinese dance to tell stories from classic literature and ancient myths that embody traditional values like loyalty, compassion, and respect for the divine.
Two of the story-based dances depict a modern-day injustice against a traditional practice—the ongoing repression of adherents of Falun Dafa, a spiritual discipline rooted in ancient Chinese culture that has at its core the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
Those two pieces, The Power of Compassion and The Divine Renaissance Begins, made an impression on Ms. Freed.
“For me the Falun Gong [pieces] had the most impact—the difficulties in China and how they tell the story here in Canada. That was the part that kept my attention and kept me interested was learning more about the story from the dancers’ point of view about the Falun Gong [situation in China],” she said.
“I learned how much [Falun Dafa practitioners] are preserving the culture,” she added.
Reporting by Christina Liao and NTD Television
New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has four touring companies that perform around the world. For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org.
Epoch Times considers Shen Yun Performing Arts the significant cultural event of our time. We have proudly covered audience reaction since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
