SAN FRANCISCO—Don LaMont works for the Discovery Channel, so it was not surprising that in looking for a live production to see in San Francisco, he let fate decide and made a discovery of his own. And what a discovery!
“Very impressed!” he said after seeing the Shen Yun Performing Arts New York Company at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House on Thursday, Jan. 5.
Mr. LaMont said he knew little about the internationally-acclaimed performance company, which, according to its website, was founded by overseas Chinese artists wishing to “restore and revive Chinese traditional culture.”
Mr. LaMont had searched on Google for a live performance to see with his partner in San Francisco, and thought Shen Yun looked interesting.
“I am so glad we did. Was very impressed with it!” he said.
Beautifully designed costumes and vivid dance sequences are noted features of Shen Yun, which is recognized for offering a window into China’s 5,000-year-old culture.
Those features did not go unnoticed.
“It definitely exhibited a lot of the cultural influences and traditions of the Chinese culture,” Mr. LaMont said, adding, “I enjoyed it, it was very colorful, very charismatic and the stage production was great.”
With a background in music production, he was intrigued with the audio production of Shen Yun and the company’s music that incorporates both Western and Chinese traditional instruments in original scores.
“I thought the music production was very professional,” he said. “I was impressed.”
It was not only the audio production that captured Mr. LaMont’s attention. As a man of the industry, he had to find out more about Shen Yun’s digital backdrops.
The Shen Yun website states: “With state-of-the-art graphics technology, Shen Yun’s digital-backdrop team creates vividly animated settings. The backdrops are as grand as they are intricate. So remarkably true-to-life, they allow you to forget where you are, and journey to another place and time.”
He made a further discovery. “The computer, the CGI that they’ve used for the back projection there was quite impressive, and the way they were synched with the performers as if they were jumping out of the screen, I was very impressed with that. That was something I haven’t seen before.”
Overall, Mr. LaMont was thrilled with Shen Yun: “The stage, set and production were [all] very, very professional.”
He said he would be urging his friends to “definitely attend it, definitely see it” and hinted that he may just return with them.
“It’s definitely worth a second seeing,” he said.
Reporting by NTD Television and Laurie Gorham
Shen Yun’s New York Company will be in San Francisco until Jan. 8, and then continue on to L.A. Shen Yun Performing Arts has three touring companies that perform simultaneously around the world.
For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org
