AUSTIN—Interior designer Sharon Karch grew up training in classical dance and couldn’t help but watch Shen Yun Performing Arts with a trained eye.
“The dancers were pristine,” Ms. Karch said at The Long Center for the Performing Arts on Dec. 27.
New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company, credited with the revival of the millennia-old art form. Like ballet, classical Chinese dance is its own comprehensive dance system, with its own set of unique postures and movements.
Ms. Karch was fascinated with Shen Yun dancers’ technique, which included a key element unfamiliar to her.
“I have never seen dancers move their legs up and out like that. It was incredible, the flexibility and the strength, and the ultimate precision of all the dancers working together. There was not one mistake. Not one,” she said. “They were all together, together in sync, not missing a beat.”
Famously expressive, classical Chinese dance is an art form well-suited to storytelling and is used by Shen Yun to bring to life tales spanning five millennia in China. It is also a highly athletic art form that includes mastery of tumbling techniques—gravity-defying flips, leaps, and spins from which gymnastics and acrobatics originate.
“Beautiful, stunning,” Ms. Karch said. “I was impressed.”
A visual person, Ms. Karch said she enjoyed the use of color and brilliant stagecraft employed by Shen Yun.
“Striking—I loved it. The fabrics, the opposite colors ... the costumes were beautiful,” she said. “It was amazing, it was amazing.”
She lauded the incredible precision with which Shen Yun performers interacted with a digital backdrop, moving seamlessly at times from stage to screen. The technique is part of Shen Yun’s patented technology, designed anew each year for the new production.
“I’m trying to still figure all of that out,” Ms. Karch said.
