SAN ANTONIO—Jan. 24 was an unusually cold Saturday in San Antonio, with the temperature dropping to 25 degrees Fahrenheit.
For James and Nina Serrato, who live in a small town north of San Antonio, instead of staying warm at home, they drove for an hour on the icy road to the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, where the pure beauty of Shen Yun’s classical Chinese dance and music melted their hearts.
“Roads are frozen, but we still thought [Shen Yun] is a good thing to come [to].“ Mr. Serrato, a high-ranking law enforcement official in Bexar County, said, ”This is our first time here. And it is wonderful. It’s fast-paced, it’s entertaining. It showed us a lot about the history, the culture—the ethnicity. So, I mean, this was a great night for us. Loved it!”
Based in New York, Shen Yun Performing Arts is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance and music company with the mission to revive traditional Chinese culture and share it around the world.
Mr. Serrato was particularly impressed by Shen Yun’s patented backdrop, through which scenes from the ancient past or a faraway land, or even another realm, came to life. “[The backdrop] was phenomenal. That looked very high definition. And then I love the fact that [the images] would come forward, disappear for a second, then pop up in real life,” Mr. Serrato said, “That got me all excited. I was a five-year-old kid again.”
Shen Yun’s depiction of Chinese culture was an eye-opener for Mr. Serrato. He said, “Everything I knew before [about Chinese culture] was from movies. So, it was not very authentic. This [Shen Yun] felt like it was—closer to the origin, closer to the real thing.”
Mr. Serrato continued, “I find a lot of similarities with a lot of things, like the cowboys. This is Texas. So, we understand the Mongolian cowboy. If I remember history, the Mongols conquered the world at one point.”
One of the programs that moved both Mr. and Mrs. Serrato was the dance drama about the heroic story of faith in today’s China. “They showed the communism being just so hard on that individual for expressing himself, including taking his eyes ... and it took divine intervention to bring him back ... it really moved me.” Mr. Serrato said.
Mr. Serrato thought that the Shen Yun dancerswere “phenomenal.” He said, “They must practice every day since they’re little because their abilities are beautiful. They’re on time; nobody was late; nobody’s off-key; nobody fell.
Reporting by Sonia Wu and Sophia Fang.
The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
