SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Shen Yun ‘A Beautiful Gift’ to Everyone Who Sees It: Songwriter

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Shen Yun ‘A Beautiful Gift’ to Everyone Who Sees It: Songwriter
Shen Yun Performing Arts' curtain call at The Palace Theatre in Stamford on March 7, 2025. The Epoch Times
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STAMFORD, Conn.—Songwriter John Trani was moved to tears witnessing not only the beauty created by the artists of Shen Yun Performing Arts, but the compassion he felt they radiated.

“It’s just a beautiful gift to give to, to everyone that sees it,” Mr. Trani said at The Palace Theatre on March 8. “And I was just reading today before I came down that it’s branched out all over the world. And, you know, that gift can spread all over.”

Founded in New York in 2006, Shen Yun has grown to eight companies that now tour the world simultaneously to bring audiences around the world “China before communism.” Shen Yun, the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company, has a mission to revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilization through music and dance.

What the artists accomplished, Mr. Trani said, was “perfection beyond belief.”

John Trani enjoyed Shen Yun Performing Arts at The Palace Theatre in Stamford on March 8, 2025. (Sally Sun/The Epoch Times)
John Trani enjoyed Shen Yun Performing Arts at The Palace Theatre in Stamford on March 8, 2025. Sally Sun/The Epoch Times
“It was beyond words. Everything was so enlightening. The message, the costumes, the dancers, the energy. It was just perfect. Absolutely perfect. It could not have been better,“ Mr. Trani said. ”The perfection of all of the steps, the grace, the beauty, the costumes, everything, it was just amazing.”

He was referring to the orchestra as well as the dancers, he added.

“That’s the other reason why I’m so happy,” he said, adding that the musicians were worth watching in their own right. “When you know everything that goes into every single song, I was just spellbound. And I loved the authentic Chinese instruments. I really enjoyed watching them. I really enjoyed it.”

Shen Yun’s orchestra is unique in that it combines ancient Chinese and classical Western instruments, using the grandeur of an orchestra to carry the evocative ancient Chinese melodies in compositions written specifically to accompany the dance vignettes.

“It’s so inspiring,” Mr. Trani said. “And it went with the dancing perfectly and the dynamics, the sounds from being very subtle and soft to being very dynamic and having such that range—I loved it.”

Mr. Trani felt Shen Yun was needed more than ever.

“I don’t like to go into it, but all of the terrible cruelty that’s going on in the world and the lack of compassion—and this brings it out—this really brings it out. The message, the expression of the dancers, everything here: compassion, that’s the word,” he said.

“Compassion and the feeling that reminds us that we’re all one, that we’re all one,” Mr. Trani said.

Mr. Trani’s personal life mantra is kindness, and so appreciated and resonated with what he saw in Shen Yun.

“The show and the theme and the dances express kindness,” he said. “To me, it’s the only reason we’re here.”

Reporting by Sally Sun 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.
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