Washington Enthralled With Shen Yun

WASHINGTON—Drawing upon 5,000 years of Chinese tradition, Shen Yun Performing Arts played at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center Opera House on Saturday afternoon, March 24.

Le-Ha Anderson, a manager for media and community relations, said Shen Yun “was everything that I heard it was going to be: It was magnificent. It was brilliant. Very educational.”

“The performance is beautiful. The performers are very, very talented,” she said. According to the company’s website, Shen Yun aims to revive the age-old culture of China through performing arts, using classical Chinese dance as its main expression.

“The scenery and the use of the digital screen was just magnificent,” Mrs. Anderson said, referring to the backdrop that is integral to the Shen Yun performance. Some of the sceneries include pastoral landscapes, flower-filled forests, and mountaintops.

“It was also just very interesting to learn about the Chinese history,” she said. “And in particular, about the suppression” of spirituality in China.

Several pieces depict the 12-year-long persecution of the Falun Gong mediation practice in China. Falun Gong is a mind-body practice with mediation exercises and teachings based on truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, and which the company says “has helped over a hundred million Chinese people understand and return to the essence of traditional Chinese culture—Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist schools of thought.”

“It was an educational experience for me to learn that,” she said, adding that she “can practice [her] religion so easily” in the U.S., “there are people in China who can’t.”

Overall, she noted that the Shen Yun performers show “the tremendous pride that the Chinese people feel about their culture and their history.”

According to the company’s website, the “mini-drama pieces” depict stories and legends that were passed down from China’s antiquity, and spans different dynasties.

Reporting by NTD Television and Jack Phillips

Shen Yun Performing Arts, based in New York, tours the world on a mission to revive traditional Chinese culture. Shen Yun Performing Arts Touring Company will perform at The Kennedy Center Opera House, Washington, D.C., through April 1.

For more information visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org