SAN ANTONIO—Alejandrina Terrazas, violinist, attended Shen Yun Performing Arts with a companion at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts on Feb. 19.
Former second chair violinist in the El Paso Symphony Orchestra, Ms. Terrazas was moved by the music.
“You elevated my spirit. You had real musicians there. You didn’t have recordings. It’s a live orchestra. That’s a beauty in itself,” she said.
Based in New York,
Shen Yun Performing Arts is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance and
music company. To the delight of its audiences worldwide, the company can be expected to present a brand-new set of programs every season.
“I am a violinist so I know what a lot of hard work it takes to do that. I feel that all of you are playing your soul out. I think it’s probably because those people carry their belief in the music. They speak through their music. They say, ‘This is what we love. This is what we believe in.’ You bring it out in your music and your dance. It’s just elevating. Oh my gosh, thank you for this gift,” she said.
Ms. Terrazas stressed the importance of keeping tradition. “You want to keep the tradition alive. As Catholics, the traditional Latin is being obliterated, just like they want to obliterate you and your faith, and your customs, and your clothes, and your culture, and everything. So I am blessed that I was able to come and see what you are going through.”
Feelings poured out when she heard the
music. “My tears just came out because it’s sublime. It’s divine. It’s what God wants. We don’t have that now, in a world where we are all into materialistic things, into what can I gain by stepping on someone else.”
She spoke about so many who live in our
troubled world. “They don’t follow their faith. God said we are going to be fooled by what we see and what we hear.” She said people need to be rooted in faith in order to find their way. “If you don’t know the faith that you have, you are going to be blinded by everything around you, because you won’t recognize that you are being fooled.”
Ms. Terrazas said she could recognize that Shen Yun
artists had kept their faith, “through the
music, through the dance, through the colors,“ she felt them ”speaking to me and telling me that you have your faith.”
The dancers impressed her. “I was just telling this young lady here how [the dancers] were all just graceful and modest. You don’t see that anymore. I’m so glad I came.”
Although retired as a musician,
Shen Yun inspired her to pick up her music again. “You all inspired me to go home and get that violin out. Really, because I need to do that. I need to speak to people with my music. Like you spoke to us with your music.”
“My mom taught me to play music only. She would say, ‘When are you going to play from within you? From within you? Without music in front of you?’ It used to bother me, but I started doing that. I play by ear now and I can speak to you. If I have my violin right now, I will play something for you. In gratitude.”
Ms. Terrazas noted the difference of when musicians play from the heart and interpret the true essence of a work, “feeling it and living it and projecting [the composer’s] message,” rather than showing off themselves in the music. She felt
Shen Yun accomplished the former.
She praised the Shen Yun’s artistic director. “You are blessed with this man that kept this tradition going. He kept the traditional
dance going. What grace, what love he has. He spoke to us with his music. He shared with us what’s going on over there. That’s what he did.”
“I would say thank you for your gift. For your gift of beauty, of grace. Thank you for taking me to God. Thank you for taking me away from this difficulty that we’re living through right now,” she said.
“And I will be praying for you because I know you have families in China that are being persecuted, and it breaks my heart. This is happening everywhere. So we need to get together in our art. That’s what I would say.”
Reporting by Sally Sun and Yvonne Marcotte.
