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SEATTLE—“I thought it was brilliant,” said showgoer Mr. Bennick. He was describing Shen Yun Performing Arts, which opened at Seattle’s Paramount Theater on Friday evening, May 22.
Mr. Bennick is a professional speaker as well as a singer in a number of different bands in the punk rock genre, including one that’s known internationally.
He also has a background in filmmaking and is trained as an actor, which he said helped him appreciate the finer points of the show and the expertise of the dancers. He was especially impressed with the animated digital 3-D backdrop, unique to Shen Yun.
“I am not entirely familiar with Chinese art forms other than the Chinese opera that I saw a few years ago in Seattle, so I thought it was totally enlightening. It's just not the artistic forms of dance and singing that I am used to seeing, so it was brilliant,” he said.
“Every moment of the show signifies something … so it's a feast for the eyes in a way, meaning that I thought it was ingenious to use the backdrop as a way of introducing the actors on the stage. It's not something that I've seen before. So you're always engaged in a way. You're not just watching singing and dancing, you're watching an entire theatrical production that draws you in in a number of different ways,” he said.
He especially liked the drumming pieces and tenor Tian Ge’s “very powerful” rendition of "Not Looking Back."
“To see someone referencing 'the Party' or the 'oppression' or very specific references to the fact that outside of this context—if this production was produced, say, in China, we would be having a very different conversation afterwards, largely with a fear for what the repercussions would be for the artists themselves and maybe even us as the audience.”
Shen Yun is a group of New York-based Chinese artists who are reviving Chinese traditional culture that was almost wiped out after the communist regime took power in China.
The show depicts myths and legends from ancient China, contrasting with stories from contemporary China where spiritual belief is persecuted. One such dance, Heaven Awaits Us Despite Persecution, shows the father of a young girl being persecuted by the Chinese authorities for his belief in the spiritual practice of Falun Dafa, which is rooted in Chinese culture.
Mr. Bennick said that both he and a friend who also attended the show thought using the performing arts to depict human rights abuses was “effective.
“The friend that I brought with me tonight is actually a professor of theater and theater history that I studied under at Cornish College of the Arts. His response and mine to the show were similar. When the second intermission was called he turned to me and said, ‘These people are certainly fighting the devil tonight,’ meaning that in the face of oppression this [is] a way to fight that oppression most effectively.”
The Shen Yun orchestra, a blend of Chinese and Western instruments that plays only original compositions, also impressed Mr. Bennick.
“I would hope that Westerners and Easterners alike could bond togehter with the message of the show and specifically the music, which strikes everybody regardless of language. So to see Western and Eastern instruments being used together was really effective in dong exactly that—bonding cultures geographically, globally, together in one show. It's … brilliant.”
The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of the Shen Yun Performing Arts Spring Tour 2009. For more information please visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org
