MISSISSAUGA, Canada—Marlene Koiter is a poet and author. A spiritual woman, she considers the deeper questions of life but didn’t expect the same from Shen Yun Performing Arts at its final show at the Living Arts Centre on Thursday night, April 28.
“I thought it was absolutely fascinating,” she said.
Shen Yun was founded on a mission to revive 5,000 years of divinely inspired Chinese culture, a heritage nearly destroyed after the communist revolution in China led to a policy of atheism, a policy violently enforced and propagated during the Cultural Revolution.
A Shen Yun performance isn’t only a feast for the eyes, it presents to the audience a sea of traditional Chinese culture, showing the values and principles that form the essence of traditional Chinese culture. This depth in the performance had Mrs. Koiter surprised.
“It offered more than I was expecting, so it got me thinking.”
She pointed to the song lyrics as an example she was drawn to as a poet.
“They certainly raise a lot of issues, the most important one being, ‘what next,’ ‘where do we go from here.’ That angle actually surprised me very much. I just wasn’t expecting that, but that’s something more, I think.”
The song texts that Shen Yun’s three vocal soloists sing, original works written for these pieces, are philosophical reflections about human life and contain deep layers of meaning.
Mrs. Koiter noted that these kinds of ideas are not popularly discussed very much in today’s society, but said Shen Yun could change that for many people and offered an opening to think about and talk about the bigger questions of life.
“It was interesting that it ended on a note of hope. And I think that what it probably has done is opened the door for a few people to start thinking in another direction.”
“I think most people suspect very strongly that there’s something else, that there’s something greater, there’s something deeper,” said Mrs. Koiter.
“Perhaps it’s time that we started thinking more deeply about the things that really matter, which is not just the visibles and the tangibles, something beyond that. Who we are really, where we came from. Did we come from heaven originally? And are we on the way back there?”
New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has four touring companies that perform simultaneously around the world. Shen Yun’s International Company is currently touring Eastern Canada. 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 reaction since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
