MINNEAPOLIS—At the Orpheum Theatre on Feb. 14, Marlene Romero, a nurse, and her husband Anthony Ronquillo, a business transformation manager, celebrated Valentine’s Day by seeing Shen Yun together.
Shen Yun Performing Arts is currently touring around the world. As it makes a stop in the Midwest, tonight was the first of several shows this weekend in both Minneapolis and St. Louis.
Shen Yun includes short vignettes featuring classical Chinese dance, a full-orchestra with both Eastern and Western instruments, solo vocal and instrumental performers, and interactive HD backdrops.
Shen Yun’s mission is to revitalize 5,000 years of traditional Chinese culture through the beauty of its performance.
The couple was extremely impressed with the quality of Shen Yun’s dancers.
“Oh my gosh, I am so impressed,” said Ms. Romero. “The dance, particularly with the males, the flexibility and the height of their leaps is excellent, and the women, their flexibility, their unity, they way they are all synchronized perfectly. It’s phenomenal.”
“We saw it advertised on TV and our oldest daughter was a dancer, so we’ve learned a lot about dancing, the beat, the arm, the synchronicity, the flexibility, the strength for the leaps so we’ve learned a lot about that watching her dance through the years,” Ms. Romero explained.
“So when I’m looking and watching them dance, that’s what I’m looking at,” she said. “You know their feet, their toes are pointed, the graceful movements with their hands. It was beautiful and I wanted to come see it and appreciate it.”
Mr. Ronquillo felt the same way: “The male dancers are very athletic, and they tumble with great skill. They also have a lot of emotion in their faces when they dance. They are, it’s very pleasurable to watch.”
“I liked the way that the dancers move, very quickly with no upper body motion. That’s very impressive; it looks like they are floating,” he added.
Looking beyond the surface beauty, the couple saw deeper elements.
Ms. Romero stated, “What I have seen is a relationship with nature that they have incorporated, like the ocean.” He further said that their felt their spiritual feelings towards nature revealed in “appreciation and a respect.”
“I felt like there was a lot of traditional childhood stories,” Mr. Ronquillo mentioned. “I could see what Chinese parents might be telling their children. The stories they would tell their children, kind of like the stories we tell our children from our culture.”
Mr. Ronquillo identified with one segment of the show in particular, “I liked when the father was disappointed when he had a meatball and then all of a sudden he had a son and then he was trying to figure it out, and then he was happy and then his son ended up doing great things.”
“I know that for me, this is what parents want with their children,” he realized. “They finally get a child and they’re not sure, ... are caring for the child and then the child does things that make them very happy. That’s the part that I identified with.”
Reporting by Joan Wang and Andrew Darin
New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has four touring companies that perform simultaneously around the world. For more information, visit Shen Yun Performing Arts.
The Epoch Times considers Shen Yun Performing Arts the significant cultural event of our time. We have proudly covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
