SAN FRANCISCO—As Shen Yun Performing Arts played for the second straight day at San Francisco War Memorial Opera House on Jan. 4, attorney Kelly Drumm, Senior Counsel at the University of California, attended the performance with her mother Corrine for the latter’s 70th birthday.
“It was very artistic and beautiful … the choreography was wonderful,” Ms. Drumm said.
She was especially impressed with the symmetry in the choreography, in which dancers flowed and spun across stage in perfect unison.
Shen Yun gives a colorful and vivid portrayal of Chinese ethnic and folk dances, which “represents a vast and varied assortment of traditional dance styles,” according to Shen Yun. The distinct ways of life of China’s 55 ethnic minorities are “deeply embedded into each ethnicity’s dance style.”
“The mixture of dance cultures from traditional China was very lovely,” Ms. Drumm commented.
What struck the elder of the pair was that the flips and other tumbling techniques of classical Chinese dance presented in the performance were actually thousands of years old.
“It isn’t just tumbling like we think of acrobatics today, but those are generations past. This is not new to Chinese culture—its part of their dance,” she said.
Shen Yun also features a full live orchestra that uniquely includes Chinese instruments. Seated near the orchestra pit, the two noted a significant number of women among the orchestra members.
“I noticed the one woman trombone player. The timpani player is a woman … and the conductor was a woman also—very good,” Ms. Drumm’s mother commented.
Classical Chinese dance is a dance system with a history of thousands of years. “And while soaking up profound wisdom from every era and dynasty, it has become a complete system of dance embodying traditional aesthetic principles,” according to Shen Yun.
What, in particular, caught Ms. Drumm’s attention during the program?
“The choreography was wonderful,” she said. “But I also did very much like the struggle—having the performance regarding the struggle of the Chinese government against traditional values. It was an interesting perspective for me to see that in performance.”
A few of Shen Yun’s pieces depict the current, ongoing persecution of Falun Dafa—also known as Falun Gong—in China, where its practitioners have been subjected to a litany of abuses by the Chinese state for the past 12 years.
“We don’t hear about it in American media. We don’t—no matter how much news you read. It’s not something that’s spoken of a lot. So it was moving,” Ms. Drumm said.
Ms. Drumm and her mother were also impressed by Shen Yun’s state-of-the-art animated digital backdrop. Synchronized with all other aspects of the performance, digitally-projected scenes allow the audience to be transported to other worlds.
“It was clever the way the gods would come in and off the screen and come onto the stage and come alive,” Ms. Drumm said.
“That was the first thing I noticed. Oh look look look!” her mother added enthusiastically.
Ms. Drumm urges friends to go see the performance.
“It’s Shen Yun! Go see it!”
Reporting By Gary Wang and Jasper Fakkert.
Shen Yun New York Company will be in San Francisco until Jan. 8, 2012. New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has three touring companies that perform simultaneously around the world. For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org
