CHICAGO—Mathura Ananthan, a doctor, and her husband, Gary Grewal, an accountant, watched Shen Yun Performing Arts’ matinee performance at the Civic Opera House on May 3.
“I thought it was really great,” Dr. Ananthan said. “It was better than I actually expected. I had expectations, but it surpassed them. The colors, the dance, everything was so well choreographed, and I really enjoyed it—it was beautiful.”
New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance and music company. Since its inception in 2006, Shen Yun’s mission has been to revive traditional Chinese culture and to show audiences the beauty of “China before communism.”
Traditional Chinese culture is founded in the teachings of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, which makes it fundamentally spiritual. Shen Yun’s performance reflects these spiritual elements, which Dr. Ananthan felt “was really well portrayed.”Though Dr. Ananthan had been apprehensive about understanding a performance where stories were going to be told without any dialogue, she found that “just from the movement and the expressions and the body language, everything was just so fluid.”
“I especially liked the scenery in the back, how it became forefront, and it was three-dimensional almost,” she said. “I really enjoyed that part.”
Mr. Grewal shared that the message he saw in Shen Yun’s performance was that “the traditions in the past are now lost.”
“The kindness, the gentleness, is kind of lost as the years have gone by, so I feel like they’re trying to trace back and trying to bring back, show that kindness, show that caring, nurturing attitude,” he said.
