TOKYO, Japan—The smile of Ms. Shilabe Bando reflected the fresh smiles of the New York-Based Shen Yun dancers who performed in Ueno, Tokyo on April 21.
Ms. Bando is a traditional Japanese dance teacher who has been dancing for 26 years. She has seen Shen Yun perform four times in Japan and described Shen Yun as an “amazing divine dance.”
Through dance and music, Shen Yun transports audiences through China’s 5000 years of divinely inspired culture. According to the Shen Yun website, “Chinese dance is at the heart of what Shen Yun does.”
Through watching Shen Yun, Ms. Bando felt that traditional Japanese dance and classical Chinese dance share the same fundamental values.
“How we express ourselves is different,” she said. “But the fundamentals, being connected to heaven and the earth and the gods, this fundamental value, I felt is the same.”
Classical Chinese dance has been passed down over thousands of years. According to the Shen Yun website, classical Chinese dance is capable of expressing personalities and feelings of characters with deep clarity, as well as depicting scenes from any time period, ancient or modern.
The dancers synchronize their movements with music from the Shen Yun orchestra who perform live. The Orchestra consists of ancient Chinese instruments, such as the erhu and the pipa that take the lead melody and are played on top of the Western instruments.
Ms. Bando found the music sacred and refreshing. She particularly enjoyed this year’s solo erhu performance by Xiaochun Qi called “All For Today.”
“The erhu was really lovely. I felt as if I was being cleansed,” she said.
Ms. Bando also enjoyed watching all the beautifully floating costumes on stage.
“Every scene is wonderful,” she said.
New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has four touring companies that perform around the world. For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org.
Epoch Times considers Shen Yun Performing Arts the significant cultural event of our time. We have proudly covered audience reaction since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006
