UNIVERSITY PARK, Illinois—Anthony Butler, a kindergarten teacher and minister, watched Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Center for Performing Arts at Governors State University on April 29.
“I was absolutely stunned [and] amazed,” said Mr. Butler. “I feel maybe a little more connection to Chinese culture.”
Mr. Butler said that he learned “things that surprised me that I wouldn’t have known previously, especially the whole understanding of the divine and how that really informs people. It grounds them.”
Mr. Butler said that the connection between Chinese people and the divine was not something he had known about through his own faith tradition and that “to see that brought forth in an ancient art form was really special.”
“The connection of faith, the connection of that there’s a reality that’s … deeper. There’s a deeper reality that resonates within us, and that I think we find that through art. We find that there’s that connection. We come to know that maybe through song, through dance, through music, through beautiful costumes. I was really surprised at how I appreciated just the visual aspect of the costumes and how they were created and designed.”Mr. Butler said that he was surprised by how artistic Chinese culture was and that he found it resonated with him.
“So much of the rhetoric that we hear, that we read about is ... a really technocratic sense of China that’s almost mechanistic, and where’s the art in that? And then it’s beautifully displayed … [something that] sometimes is not able to be presented, that people aren’t able to express that.”
“So that, for me, really was a surprise, that it’s expressed, that it’s beautiful, and that there’s something with all of it that resonates with me.”
The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
