PORTLAND, Ore.—At the end of the final Shen Yun Performing Arts Performance at the Keller Auditorium on April 14, 2016, the captivated audience thanked the artists with a standing ovation. And the first one, leading the ovation, was Brenda Neelands, who jumped up applauding vigorously even before the show was over. She kept applauding until the audience left the theater.
“It was fantastic. It is my first time of ever seeing it. It was ... absolutely beautiful. The colors, the smoothness of it, it was like they were floating across the stage,” Ms. Neelands, the medical lab assistant with Legacy Lab, said with emotion.
The novel state-of-the-art graphics technology just blew her away.
“I loved the backdrop and stage integration, it was magical; I loved to watch them pop up from behind the steps—it was always perfect timing; it was like a surprise. I loved it,” Ms. Neelands continued.
Shen Yun’s digital-backdrop team creates vividly animated settings, extending the stage and transporting the audience to a world where heaven and earth are one, evoking a sense of spirituality.
The animated backdrop is one of Shen Yun’s most unique features. It allows the audience a feeling of transcending time and space, as if they were on the scene in person, reads Shen Yun’s website.
The seamless synchronization of the animation and live action on stage is one of the things that leave many viewers in awe.
Shen Yun aims to showcase true Chinese culture, a culture going back for millenia. Ms. Neelands appreciated this mission as well as how the artists demonstrated the challenges Chinese people face simply for expressing their beliefs in China, where the communist regime has attempted to eradicate traditional values and culture.
Ms. Neelands said she was puzzled to find out that people in China still lack freedoms enjoyed in the West.
“I was very surprised to hear when they said this kind of performance could not be held in China; that surprised me,” she said with pain in her voice.
Despite its transcendent beauty and worldwide acclaim, Shen Yun cannot be seen in China today.
Similar feelings were experienced by Virginia Myers, a retired secretary with the State of Oregon in Salem, who was also in attendance at a Keller Auditorium during the April 12-14 Shen Yun performances.
Hope for the Future
Ms. Myers was mesmerized with Shen Yun’s philosophical message of peace, beauty, and harmony and, at the same time, saddened by the fact that practitioners of the ancient spiritual discipline Falun Dafa are still suffering in China and that this beautiful spectacle of Shen Yun is not allowed to be seen in there.
Ms. Myers was speaking of one of the many dances depicting China’s history. It tells of the persecution of Falun Gong in China today. In the dance, meditators are jailed and tortured, but Ms. Myers felt the portrayal was beautiful.
Ms. Myers expressed the hope that being able to learn about true history of 5,000 year old Chinese civilization and its divinely inspired culture, people will see a hope for the future.
“Hopefully, they are able to hear the actual history of many, many years ago, how sad it was in various times, and how beautiful it can be now,” she said.
Reporting by NTD Television and Nataly Teplitsky
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.
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.
