ATLANTA—Juliana Saulino, ballroom dancer and interior designer, was inspired by the athleticism of the Shen Yun Performing Arts dancers.
Her first time seeing Shen Yun, Ms. Saulino attended the evening performance at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre on Jan. 31.
“I love it; it’s beautiful,” she said. “I love the culture of it ... very inspirational, spiritual.”
Based in New York, Shen Yun is the world’s leading classical Chinese dance production. Featuring a live orchestra blending Eastern and Western instrumentation, and classical Chinese dance passed down through antiquity, Shen Yun presents story-based dances spanning 5,000 years of traditional Chinese culture. According to the company’s website, Shen Yun presents the culture of “China before communism.”
As a professional dancer, Ms. Saulino was amazed by the dancers’ athleticism.
“I love how there’s so many male dancers,” she said. “In Western culture, you don’t see as much of that.”
“So, you see a lot of the athleticism from them, which is very nice, and it balances it out on stage. ... It’s really beautiful,” she added.
With its flips and gentle elegance, classical Chinese dance is one of the most athletic and expressive art forms in the world. The movement vocabulary was enriched and refined over the dynasties and has thus become one of the world’s most comprehensive dance systems.
‘Transcends Ethnic Boundaries’
Steven Biegalski, chair of Nuclear and Radiological Engineering and Medical Physics Program at Georgia Tech, and his wife, Kendra, a professional Irish dancer, also attended the Shen Yun performance at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre on Jan. 31.
Aside from the dancers, the Biegalskis were both visually stunned by the colors of the costumes and the 3D animated backdrop, which allows the dancers to remarkably travel back and forth between the stage and the background projection.
“I find it very intriguing how they tied together the digital display with the dancers themselves; that is really, really fun,” Mrs. Biegalski said.
According to the company’s website, Shen Yun’s costumes and colors are true to traditional aesthetics and styles, painting each dance piece with the splendor of the past.
Both trained dancers, the Biegalskis, were also amazed by the Shen Yun dancers’ athleticism.
“The dancing is fabulous,” Mrs. Biegalski said. “I can see the movement translated into other activities that we are familiar with, such as ice skating, gymnastics, and other styles of dance like Russian and ballet.”
Having trained for more than two decades, Mrs. Biegalski has danced for several different Irish dance schools across the nation. She and her husband also competed in several feiseanna (Irish dance competitions) in the United States.
As a professional dancer, she noted Shen Yun’s precision and “their exacting standard of doing the moves at the same time with the exact same position.”
Recognizing some of the similarities and differences between Irish dance and classical Chinese dance, Mrs. Biegalski said, “I thought that was really interesting, how there’s some movements that transcend ethnic boundaries.”
Expressive Storytelling
According to the company’s website, classical Chinese dance involves a dance-acting element where coordinating facial expressions with physical movements results in an amplified form of expression.“That is a very unique aspect of the traditional Chinese dance method,” Mrs. Biegalksi said. “It’s different than Irish dance [since] it’s kind of hard to tell a story with Irish dancing because traditionally you don’t use your arms at all.”
Along with myths and legends from ancient times, Shen Yun presents a story-based dance that depicts the current persecution of Falun Dafa in China. Rooted in traditional Chinese culture, Falun Dafa incorporates meditation exercises and teachings of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance.
In 1999, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a persecution campaign against the spiritual practice, which is also called Falun Gong, and adherents have since been subjected to unprecedented imprisonment, torture, and abuse.
As part of the company’s mission to revive the traditional culture in China, they are “giving voice to their stories, stories of men and women who simply wish to live a spiritual life ... and to better their bodies and minds.”
Regarding bringing awareness about the persecution through dance, Mrs. Biegalksi said, “I think it’s a way to reach people’s hearts and minds at the same time.”
She said after watching Shen Yun, she was inspired to learn classical Chinese dance.
“It’s delightful. ... Just absolutely beautiful, inspiring, [and] fun,” she said.
