NEWARK, N.J.—Robert and Ann Marie Long greatly appreciated the artistry of Shen Yun Performing Arts, sharing that the experience had been one of beauty and color.
“It’s so beautiful, we love the storytelling, we love the little pictures. We were just talking about how the multimedia with
the screen behind really enhances the storytelling,” said Mrs. Long, a CPA, at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center on May 3.
“It’s all beautiful, colorful and beautiful. I love it.”
Mr. Long, a pianist and conductor, added that the stagecraft had made an impression, with Shen Yun’s innovative use of digital projection.
“I thought the use of film to connect the action on stage with the screen behind it was really clever. Very, very interesting,” he said. “Really impressive, so perfectly timed.”
Based in New York, Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company, with a
mission to revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilization through the arts.
As a musician, Mr. Long noted how impressed he was with Shen Yun’s orchestra and the fact that all
the music they had performed was composed just for the production, and done anew each year.
“This is all written for the show, it’s new music written for the performance,” he said. “It’s just beautiful, it’s a wonderful melding of the Eastern sound and the Western orchestra, orchestration. I think it’s beautiful, it’s a beautiful mix. It makes it seem very familiar to us, yet it’s unique.”
Mrs. Long agreed: “The orchestra is beautiful.”
She added that she had thought the performance was all dance, and was excited to learn that it also included musical solos, such as one by a
bel canto virtuoso. Mr. Long said the pianist accompanying the singer had been wonderful as well, with “really beautiful playing.”
“It’s wonderful, yes, it’s really beautiful. It’s
culture that we don’t know about, we haven’t seen before. And it’s really beautiful, I love how they use storytelling to share it,“ he said. ”I think that’s perfect.”
Reporting by Yeawen Hung and Catherine Yang.
