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NEW YORK—Saturday’s opening show for Shen Yun Performing Arts International Company had a wide range of creative and performing artists in the audience. Shen Yun has presented new programs at the internationally acclaimed venue Radio City Music Hall for six years running on the eve of the Lunar New Year.
Ms. Colon, a ballet dancer at the Diversity School of Dance, who attended with Ms. Montanez, said she found the show inspiring.
“Its' really pretty,” said Ms. Colon, who added that the dancing in the show captured her attention. “They're really good dancers. It's a lot of flexing, but it’s very graceful and pretty.” She added that the gracefulness of the dance movements belied how difficult they are to accomplish.
“When the guys are dancing and they do all the jumps—that’s really pretty; that's really hard to do.”
Both women got butterflies when watching the dancers, and they thought the dancers made it look easy and graceful—although it’s not very easy to accomplish.
Ms. Montanez, a modern nature photographer, said the show brought out her creative side.
“It inspired me with all the colors.” I love how it [background] changes and [had] good effects,” she said.
“You can tell they put a lot of work and time into the performance. Everything was together, it was very good,” said Ms. Montanez.
Ms. Montanez was particularly drawn to the spiritual message in the contemporary dance Nothing Can Block the Divine Path,in which a girl's mother is taken away for practicing Falun Gong, a meditation practice banned in today's China. The part she liked best was when the mother ascended to the heavens for keeping her faith in the face of adversity. The scene was supported with the use of the phenomenal digital backdrop, which elegantly and realistically showed the mother's rise to heaven.
She added that the inner meaning of the songs touched her, and the live orchestra was on point.
“You can tell that they just put a lot of work [into it],” said Ms. Montanez about the orchestra.
With reporting by Joshua Philipp.
Shen Yun Performing Arts Touring Company opened its first show of the Chinese Lunar New Year at Radio City Music Hall in New York.
Shen Yun will perform at Radio City Music Hall in New York the weekends of Feb. 13-14 and Feb. 20-21.
For more information, please visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org
