SAN DIEGO, Calif.—Shen Yun Performing Arts New York Company brought more than just a world class performance when it staged its traditional Chinese dance and music show at the California Center of the Arts, Escondido, the evening of Friday, Jan. 20.
Linda Roux, a grant writer for the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), had come to the center with her husband, Mike Kalichman, director of a research program at the same institution.
“We really enjoyed it very much. It’s beautiful and the dancers are extremely talented,” said Ms. Roux.
New York-based Shen Yun’s goal is to revive China’s five-millennia-old traditional culture. Its classical Chinese dances, together with many folk and ethnic dances, depict legends and historical and recent events.
Ms. Roux pointed out that there were important messages in the stories that were being portrayed.
“Well, the idea that people should not be persecuted for their beliefs is extremely important to us,” she said, her husband agreeing.
Traditional Chinese culture is known for the value placed on ideals such as honesty, justice, wisdom, and respect for the divine, which go back millennia to the teachings of Buddha, the Tao, and Confucius.
The portrayal of the present-day persecution in China of the peaceful meditational spiritual practice Falun Dafa, which is based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, is also part of Shen Yun’s repertoire of dances.
While the dances displayed nature in all its beauty, there were also dances with themes about “fighting for what’s right and being strong and courageous,” said Ms. Roux.
“Those are all wonderful virtues,” she explained.
Ms. Roux adored Shen Yun’s orchestra, which the company’s website says is a unique combination of traditional Chinese instruments with a classical Western philharmonic orchestra.
“Of course the dancers and the costumes and the background were beautiful as well,” she said.
Shen Yun’s hundreds of costumes are handmade and designed to represent the garb of personalities from the Tang dynasty, as well as the colorful clothing worn by ethnic groups from regions as diverse as Tibet and Mongolia, says the company’s website.
Mike Kalichman was just as impressed with the performance as his wife was.
“It was fabulously done,” he said. “The choreography, the costumes, the backdrops, and the very clever use of digital backgrounds to integrate with the performance.”
Supporting each dance is a digital backdrop, which the Shen Yun website describes as taking the audience “From vast open grasslands in one dance to the stately elegance of Tang Dynasty pavilions in another; from dusty yellow battlegrounds to tropical beaches to Himalayan peaks to picturesque scenery of the Yellow River Delta.”
“It was a really beautiful performance,” he said.
Reporting by NTD Television and Diane Cordemans.
Shen Yun Performing Arts has three touring companies that perform simultaneously around the world.
For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org.
