SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

‘I’d Like to Come as Often as I Can’: Shen Yun Audience Member

Mar 07, 2025

3/7/2025Updated: 3/7/2025

STAMFORD, Conn.—For Angela Cartwright, every Shen Yun Performing Arts experience brings something new. This time, she saw a hopeful vision for China.

“I love it. I love it. And I just love that you can learn something new. You can experience something new. And it’s wonderful to just have that experience that you wouldn’t normally have,” said Ms. Cartwright, a director of recreational therapy, after seeing Shen Yun at the Palace Theatre on March 7.

“And to see something about China that is so positive and so, you know, hopeful and just, it’s a wonderful experience. I’d like to come as often as I can,” she said.

“To be able to come back several years later to experience it again. It’s like seeing it again for the first time,” she said. “I just have a smile on my face the whole time. It’s just, it’s beautiful ... it’s just a good feeling.”

New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company, with a mission to show audiences China before communism.

Through music and dance, Shen Yun aims to bring 5,000 years of Chinese civilization to life.

“I love to see the costumes, the traditions, the story,” Ms. Cartwright said. “The incredible flexibility, the commentary to each story, the graphics are incredible. And just the fact that through such adversity, there can still be such positivity and hopefulness.”

Shen Yun produces an all-new production each season, and Ms. Cartwright said one of the new stories that stood out to her was one set in the modern day, showing the religious persecution people of faith in China face from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In such stories, Ms. Cartwright saw hope overcome despair.

“The big takeaway is you’re never too old to learn something new. And that no matter how dark days can be, there’s always something positive. You have to have hope because if you don’t have hope, what do you have?” she said.

Ms. Cartwright said that talk about China usually has to do with the communist regime. So to see a reminder of the civilization that existed before the CCP’s 75-year rule was something she appreciated.

“No one ever talks about what it was like before, so to know that there was a whole world of Chinese culture that’s being suppressed but to be able to see it, experience it, and feel it, it’s really great. I think it should be taught more. I think hopefully this show is able to travel around the country so that people, maybe break down stereotypes,” she said.

Reporting by Frank Liang and Catherine Yang.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.