PHILADELPHIA—Shen Yun Performing Arts performed its last four performances of its 2025 season on May 11, in Paris, Philadelphia, Providence, Rhode Island, and Nashville, Tennessee.
“They were just exceptional ... with synchronized, beautiful form,” said Mr. Greisiger, a retired television photographer who attended the performance with his mother, sister, and his girlfriend, Renetta Spiess. “I mean, what a polished group. Everybody was perfectly [in] unison. Wonderful performance.”
Mr. Greisiger said he has seen many theater works, but never a production with an interactive backdrop like Shen Yun’s. The patented digital backdrop technology allows performers to seemingly jump into the screen and fly off into the sky before reappearing on stage a moment later, adding what Mr. Greisiger described as a creative twist to the production.
“Oh, it’s beautiful. It was amazing,” he said. “I’ve never seen that done before. That was really interesting and creative.”
Mr. Greisiger said he had not known anything about Shen Yun before attending the performance, and discovered that the traditional Chinese culture was a spiritual one, in great contrast to China today under communist rule.
“I think the message was interesting. I didn’t know people in China thought about creation like that, about divinity,” he said. He said it was similar to his own beliefs, that humankind has an “intimate connection with the divine.”
The spirituality of traditional Chinese culture was also touching for James Bond, a pastor from Delaware, who said he felt uplifted by the positive energy of the artists.
“To see it preserved, and to learn the very harshness of communist reality, not as a relic of the 50s, but something that still is very much alive today, and the fact that a show like this cannot be transported from the foreign shores of America into the indigenous culture and the language of the people is sorely disappointing. But the beauty, the colors, the dance, the form, absolutely gratifying,” he said.
Mr. Bond said he saw hope, “particularly in some of the themes, but more profoundly in the song and when the words were captured across the screen.”
