Shen Yun’s Precision Impresses Hi-Tech Entrepreneur

Shen Yun’s excellence in dance and music highly impressed Kenneth Martin, an award-winning engineer, professor, and successful entrepreneur who saw the group’s opening performance at the Living Arts Centre in Mississauga on Thursday evening.
Shen Yun’s Precision Impresses Hi-Tech Entrepreneur
Kenneth Martin, an award-winning engineer, professor, and successful entrepreneur, was enthralled by Shen Yun Performing Arts’ opening show at the Living Arts Centre in Mississauga Jan. 16, 2014. (Madalina Hubert/Epoch Times)
1/17/2014
Updated:
1/17/2014

MISSISSAUGA, Canada—Shen Yun’s excellence in dance and music highly impressed Kenneth Martin, an award-winning engineer, professor, and successful entrepreneur who saw the group’s opening performance at the Living Arts Centre in Mississauga on Thursday evening.

“The athleticism and the timing are absolutely incredible,” he said. “The fact is, the timing is right on. It is incredible.”

Mr. Martin was moved by the prowess of Shen Yun’s dancers, who perform both classical Chinese dance and folk and ethnic dances that pay tribute to the vast Middle Kingdom’s many diverse regions and ethnicities.

“I would say the combination of the dance and the excitement with the athleticism—I love it,” he said.

Mr. Martin wrote the book, literally, on analog integrated circuit design during his time as an endowed professor at the University of Toronto. Prior to that, he was a tenured professor at UCLA where he founded the Integrated Circuits and Systems Laboratory and Major Field, the incubator of many high-tech companies including Broadcom, one of the world’s largest semiconductor vendors.

Mr. Martin has a long list of awards for his academic and engineering work, including the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Young Investigator Award. He is also the co-founder of Snowbush Microelectronics, a company that grew to 50 employees before selling to Gennum Corp. in 2007.

Granite SemicCom is his newest company. GSC is a boutique design house for sub-micron CMOS analog/mixed-mode IP blocks and is based in Toronto.

Mr. Martin noted the commitment it takes for the Shen Yun dancers to reach the skill level they display in their performances.

Classical Chinese dance is an art form passed down and enriched over thousands of years with deep roots in traditional Chinese ideas about beauty and grace. It is also physically demanding, incorporating dramatic flips and tumbling techniques that share a common ancestry with martial arts.

“The dancing is very different than what I am used to,” said Mr. Martin. “Obviously it takes 5, 10 years to get proficient at this.”

“[The dancers] must be dedicating their lives to it, so that’s a real commitment,” he added.

“I don’t think it would be possible to do if they didn’t have their heart in it. The commitment is absolutely obvious.”

Reporting by Madalina Hubert and Joan Delaney

New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has four touring companies that perform simultaneously around the world. Shen Yun’s World Company will give four sold-out performances in Mississauga before heading to Toronto on Jan. 23. For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org

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.