ATLANTA—Brian Hooper, an attorney who studied in Hong Kong right after its handover to communist China in 1997, believes that the dance company Shen Yun Performing Arts is a force for good in the world.
While displaying classical Chinese dance and spectacular visual effects on stages the world over, the New York-based dance company, Shen Yun, has a mission to revive the 5000 years of tradition and culture of China before communism.
Mr. Hooper said Shen Yun “does an excellent job of showcasing the resilient nature of the Chinese people in the face of governmental oppression.”
“I knew what [Hong Kong] was like before [communism] and now,” he said. “So it’s very clear what the Chinese government is doing.”
Now 20 years old, the dance company works to revive a culture that was almost lost in the Chinese Communist Party’s effort to destroy traditional culture, in particular during the destructive Cultural Revolution that began in the 1960s. Many of Shen Yun’s performers are Falun Gong believers, some of whom left China to escape persecution.
“I don’t know much about Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa, but I think it’s a force for positive change in China,” Mr. Hooper said. “It’s good to see a religious organization like Falun Gong maintain its consistent ability to spread the truth.”
Mr. Hooper’s 11-year-old son, Austin, who saw the show with his dad, said he “really loved” the amazing dancing and the cultural lessons the show taught.
And he learned “you should persevere even amidst suffering,” he said.
Attending the same performance on Jan. 30, John O'Brien, a software developer, said he loved the performance.
“I love the fluidity of the movements,” he said. “How well coordinated everything is, and how fluidly everything flows. That’s something I find very beautiful.”
Mr. O’Brien was also inspired by the performance’s cultural elements. Shen Yun’s mission to revive authentic Chinese culture means it showcases ethnic cultures from China, which Mr. O'Brien said really impressed him. However, Shen Yun also revives spirituality that has been suppressed by the regime.
He said man’s connection with the divine, as portrayed by Shen Yun, was “a really nice idea.” And in watching scenes such as the Chinese myth of creation, he found similarities with Christianity. “In Western religions, we have similar beliefs in that regard, right? Where there’s a heaven, and after life you go there,” he said. “I think it’s quite similar.”
During a song by one of Shen Yun’s baritones in between dance segments, Ryan Lawler, who runs his own construction company, was in the same theater, watching and listening. The lyrics to the song were “very powerful” spiritually, he said. “I didn’t realize that there was such a Christian basis in it.”
Many of the themes of Shen Yun’s songs, as with its dance pieces, revolve around divine intervention: good is rewarded and evil punished.
Gina Lawler said the message “connected to us spiritually.”
