SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Award-winning singer and actress Raquela Burt is one of the most sought-after professional voice teachers in Northern California.
After attending Shen Yun Performing Arts’ evening show at the SAFE Credit Union Performing Arts Center on Jan. 26, she couldn’t stop praising the company’s baritone.
“There are no words that could describe his [air] support and breath control. Most importantly, the projection of his voice—he’s well trained, and he has an incredible amount of experience,” she said.
“He’s obviously very young, but I can see him singing for the rest of his life. He sings wonderfully. It’s just such a tremendous performance that I was crying at the end.”
“The richness of his voice—I was moved. I stopped reading the translation because he was performing so well that I didn’t need to anymore. I understood and felt the inspiration [of the song.] It was so beautiful,” she explained.
“The tone of his voice, the performance, the support, his pronunciation—everything. It was just beautiful. I felt the environment of his voice, and it consumed me,” she said.
Ms. Burt was also pleasantly surprised by the variety of performances the evening offered.
“I thought it was mostly dancing, but I didn’t know there was going to be this beautiful digital performance in the background and the choreography and the timing and the synchronization [of the dancers]—I had no idea,” Ms. Burt exclaimed.
“It’s important that [the artists] perform big so that everybody way in the back of the theater can hear and see and feel the storytelling. I understood everything that was going on, every bit of the storytelling. I was crying at the end.”
Reflecting on the company’s mission to revive traditional culture and bring back the divine-inspired beauty of pre-communist China, Ms. Burt agreed that “communism is taking away from the culture.”
Currently practicing meditation to calm her anxiety, Ms. Burt said she wished that she could see Shen Yun every day.
“I felt the spirituality of the whole storytelling and the performance and the dancing—it calmed me. I wish I could come and see this every single night. I don’t care if I watched it over and over again.”
“I want to thank them all for coming here to Sacramento and sharing a bit of their soul and spirit on what they believe through the arts,” she said.
“It’s so tremendous. This has been an amazing experience for me.”
