HOLLYWOOD, Calif.—Adam Croasdell said Shen Yun Performing Arts had the effect of uplifting and inspiring the artist, a rare and beautiful trait in art created today.
“It was absolutely riveting. Beautiful, beautiful,” said Mr. Croasdell, an actor best known for appearing in “Reign” and “Preacher.” He saw the matinee performance at the Dolby Theater on April 6.
“It’s very nice to see a show that concentrates on the highest and the best of humanity. I think there’s a propensity these days to concentrate on the ugliness and the ultraviolence and sort of the lowest that humanity has to offer,” he said. “And this is the opposite of that.”
New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company and has a mission to revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilization through music and dance.
“It’s very uplifting and very culturally fascinating,“ Mr. Croasdell said. ”It’s very entertaining and yet very transporting in the highest way.”
Mr. Croasdell added that classical Chinese dance wasn’t something you could see in film or television or even generally at the theater.
Related Stories
“This is extremely refreshing,” he said. “They [the audience] were radiant, and they had a spring in their step after this."
“I’m delighted that accessible stories of the highest that humanity has to offer are—it’s possible to show the best of human nature and also the incorporation of the divine and human,” he said. “Everybody that I saw and heard afterward were delighted.”
For thousands of years, Chinese culture was considered divinely inspired; the ancient Chinese believed their culture was a gift from the heavens. The communist regime in China took power only in 1949 and has since then sought to destroy traditional culture and replace it with struggle. As such, Shen Yun bills its program as “China before communism.”
Mr. Croasdell said he hoped Shen Yun’s vision may become reality again.
“I hope there’s a day in the near future where the arts can return to China and shows like this can be seen,” he said.
“I think any time the state or government tries to control the arts,“ he added. ”Artists traditionally have always sort of spoken truth to power, and that’s happened in medieval European courts, with the jester doing it to kings and queens all the way through to what we’re seeing now with this particular show.”
Coming from a stage background himself, Mr. Croasdell expressed tremendous appreciation for the Shen Yun artists’ craft.
“You have to be slightly bigger in your performance in order to reach the people in the back, and they did it beautifully. There was a lot of subtlety and an excellent communication between the stage and the audience,“ he said. ”Absolutely phenomenal.”
He praised the choreography and the talent and technique of the artists.
“They’re very skilled indeed, all of them,” he said. “The live music was phenomenal—what a treat to have Chinese instruments ... the sound was very transporting and, yes, beautifully choreographed between the orchestra pit and the stage.”
With reporting by NTD.
The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
