“It was incredible. I think the dancers were great. I think the music was beautiful. The costumes were incredible. I think it was a very good experience from beginning to end. I really enjoyed it and I will definitely come again next year. It’s beautiful.”
“[Classical Chinese dance] is very unique. ... [The dancers] are very uniform. It’s incredible when they move together because it is like one solid motion. [And] incredible flips, incredible tumbling, especially by the men. ... It was amazing.”
“[The female dancers were] so beautiful, so graceful, so elegant, especially the emotions that came through what they were doing, it was so incredible. Everything they did had an emotion, even with their sleeves, even when they moved something, when they touch something, with their fans, with their handkerchief. Everything was so coordinated, so beautiful. They moved with such grace. You don’t even see them walking. It’s like they are just floating on air.”
“I love [the storytelling aspect]. Especially to learn about a different culture, I think it is very interesting. I like that it takes you from beginning to end, and they [include the dances of] the different ethnic groups that are in China. I like that they explore all the different histories. And the [digital] background, I thought it was very interesting, very very nice to see.”
“I [take away] a lot of appreciation for the talent, the extreme difficulty in what they do. Just learning that elegance and that grace that they have when they move, you can take away that creativity that they have when it comes to the way they move, the fluidity of how they do things.”
“That orchestra was incredible. They are so talented. Everyone was so talented—the erhu [soloist], and the [soprano] was so beautiful, her voice was incredible. All the musicians are so talented. From start to end, I feel it was such a harmonious balance between the dancers and the performers and the music.”
“I love [the orchestra and its combination of Chinese and Western instruments]. I think the fusion of two cultures is always a nice thing to see especially because we are in a very multicultural society now. And I think it is amazing to bring one culture with another culture and bring it together and create something new and interesting that people haven’t really seen before. I think it was very beautiful.”
“The name [Shen Yun, which means ‘the beauty of divine beings dancing,’] definitely encompasses the show that is put together, especially a lot of the scenes were about divinities, the heaven, paradise. ... It was very subtle but it also came through in the Chinese culture. It was beautiful.”
“For me, the most amazing part was the last scene [‘The Divine Renaissance Begins’] and the first scene [‘From Heaven to Save All’]. You started in the Heaven, then you went down to the Earth. ... That imagery of the Heaven at the beginning and at the end, I thought it was so beautiful. It was like a beginning and an end, like a future, a present and a past all at the same time. Very nice.”
“I’ll bring home culture, experience, divinity, beauty, grace, elegance, and overall just enlightenment on the culture and the experience of the dance that they do and all the talent and the effort that goes behind it.”
“They had a dance about social media and how it is taking away from divinity or the nature of humanity. It gives you a reminder to open your eyes—think more about humanity, about people, about the culture that we have and about embracing that culture and that divinity that we have together, and not just the technology.”
