“It’s just a wonderful show … I think it’s fantastic,” he said.“I like seeing the dance and hearing the music all through storytelling … it’s a great way to communicate and educate.”
“It’s divine,” Mr. Levine said.
‘We Transcend Whatever Is Put on Us’
Arden Twining, head of learning and development, was moved to tears by the beauty of Shen Yun at The Hanover Theatre on Jan. 15.
“It was overwhelmingly beautiful, overwhelmingly profound,” she said, “I cried twice during the show—tears running down my face—because it was profound, it was truly an awesome experience.”
Since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006, its mission has been to revive the traditional culture of China through music and dance. The age-old culture has been on the brink of extinction since the Chinese communist regime seized power in 1949. Shen Yun says its performance demonstrates “China before communism.”
Shen Yun presents story-based dances depicting the persecution of Falun Dafa, also called Falun Gong, a meditation and spiritual discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in 1999, and adherents have since been subjected to unprecedented imprisonment, torture, and abuse.
Ms. Twining was saddened to learn that the Chinese people today “can’t express their religion, they can’t express their faith, they can’t express their true history” and said Shen Yun expressed “really terrifying things in a very beautiful way.”
Ms. Twining felt that the ability to express such profound messages is best delivered through the arts.
“It’s through art that people can connect … very deeply and easily.”
“Because [the persecution’s] expressed artistically, people understand it intrinsically … you feel it emotionally, you feel it in your heart,” she said. “It’s so profoundly well done and beautiful and strong.”
“What I learned from [Shen Yun] is that the human spirit is indomitable, it can’t be crushed,” she said. “Humans can be crushed, individuals can be crushed, but the human spirit cannot be crushed … we transcend whatever is put on us.”
“I got some hope from it,” she added.
