CINCINNATI—Chris Porzel, a business manager, and his wife Erin watched
Shen Yun Performing Arts at Aronoff Center for the Arts on March 2.
“I love the show,” said Mrs. Porzel. “The choreography and artistry is just beautiful.”
“The colors, the music, the emotion in the show, the storytelling is wonderful,” said Mr. Porzel. “The visualization, the choreography. It’s all quite different than Western civilization.”
New York-based Shen Yun was founded in 2006 by Chinese artists. Now the world’s leading classical Chinese dance and music company, Shen Yun’s mission is
to revive traditional Chinese culture and the beauty of China before communism.
According to Shen Yun’s website, many traditional Chinese values and beliefs were destroyed when the
Chinese Communist Party seized power and enforced its atheist ideology. Mr. Porzel said that seeing the Chinese regime’s
oppression in the modern-day depicted through some of the story-based dances in Shen Yun’s program offered him a new perspective on American society.
“If you understand the gravity of what that message is telling and the trials that the Chinese culture has gone through [with] the communist regime and all that, watching that unfold was impactful, it really was, and shocking,” said Mr. Porzel. “We’re pretty guarded here in America … and we haven’t really gone through that sort of struggle. So, seeing that on stage was pretty interesting for me.”
Mr. Porzel felt that Shen Yun’s performance was eye-opening and educational.
“It’s showing us a history of culture from the standpoint that we don’t really get to see too often,” he said. “The internet makes the world a smaller place, but the only way you get to see something like that is through research, not on stage per se, and I feel for me, that seeing just the
cultural elements that have been forgotten or not allowed now in China today is inspiring. It’s very, very interesting that there’s a big world out there.”
During the performance, the audience learned that Shen Yun is unfortunately not allowed to perform in China. Mr. Porzel said although China “wouldn’t allow something like this, it’s allowed here, [which] really brings peace to me. … The Chinese culture being able to tell the story in the way they are here today makes me feel comfortable to be here.”
Mr. Porzel also said that the
spirituality of Chinese culture he saw portrayed in Shen Yun made him feel the connection between different cultures.
“Seeing [spirituality] portrayed in the Asian culture has always been fascinating for me,” said Mr. Porzel. “Hearing that message, a unifying message from a faith-based standpoint, makes it a smaller world, one world.”
Reporting by Charlie Lu and Wandi Zhu.
