SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Beauty and Unity on Stage, Gold Coast Dancer Says of Shen Yun

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Beauty and Unity on Stage, Gold Coast Dancer Says of Shen Yun
Sue Hancock (L) and her daughter, Isabelle Hancock, attend Shen Yun Performing Arts at HOTA on the Gold Coast, Australia, on Feb. 23, 2024. NTD

GOLD COAST, Australia—Professional dancer and 2017 Gold Coast Eisteddfod grand champion soloist Isabelle Hancock was amazed by Shen Yun Performing Arts at the full-house opening night of its 2024 Australian tour at HOTA on Friday.

The world’s premier classical Chinese dance company, Shen Yun, is back in Australia, dazzling audiences with all-new choreography as it continues its mission to revive 5,000 years of traditional Chinese culture.

“I really enjoyed it,” Ms. Hancock said. “The costumes are beautiful on stage … Everyone’s so together, it’s so [in] unison.

“It is just amazing to watch,” she said.

She commended the technique of Shen Yun’s classically trained dancers, who are based in New York.

“It looks absolutely phenomenal onstage, all together,” she said. “The jumps are beautiful, and the turns as well. With all the different variety of them, and the flips, it’s really great to watch.”

Isabelle Hancock was enjoying Shen Yun with her mother, Sue.

“We haven’t seen anything like this before,” Mrs. Hancock said. “Costumes are fabulous. So far, I think my favourite performance was the one with the long sleeves,” she said of Shen Yun’s “Sleeves of Grace” piece.

Mrs. Hancock added, “We didn’t realise that the show progresses back 5,000 years. So that’s pretty interesting itself, and obviously there’s a lot of different themes going on. You actually learn a lot, too, whilst watching the show, as well as the beautiful dancers.”

Shen Yun’s mission is to remind the world of the true essence of authentic Chinese culture, which has ancient roots dating back to “China before communism.”

“It absolutely shows the history of China,” Ms. Hancock said, encouraging everyone to go and see Shen Yun perform.
Shen Yun performs again at HOTA on Feb. 24, after which it will tour in Brisbane, Bendigo, Canberra, Sydney, and Perth.

‘Years and Years and Years’

Leigh Elliot attends Shen Yun Performing Arts at HOTA on the Gold Coast, Australia, on Feb. 23, 2024. (NTD)
Leigh Elliot attends Shen Yun Performing Arts at HOTA on the Gold Coast, Australia, on Feb. 23, 2024. NTD

Also in the audience on Friday evening was Leigh Elliot, who has been a dance teacher for 42 years.

Ms. Elliot said that Shen Yun made learning about Chinese culture and its myths and legends accessible.

“I like the fact we’ve got this little synopsis before each number, so it makes it interesting that we can follow along,” she said.

She expressed admiration for “the classical technique because that’s the foundation of all dance.”

“The technique is obviously perfect—superb. The precision, everything about it: it’s exciting, it’s exhilarating, colourful,” she said. “Obviously, they’re very well-trained, which is the most important thing. Years and years and years of training have gone into what you’re seeing tonight—I know that very well.”

An Amazing Culture

Donna Ireland, a team leader at Dementia Australia, also said she enjoyed Shen Yun’s performance.

“It’s just given me so much information about the culture, and it’s just beautiful,” she said.

She loved the Mongolian dance and expressed her appreciation for Shen Yun’s cultural mission.

“I think it’s really important that people understand the importance of bringing that culture back to China because sometimes, we only hear about the negative and all the trouble rather than the amazing culture and the fantastic spiritual side of China.

“And when I was watching about the trouble there, it broke my heart to see that was still happening today,” she said.

Ms. Ireland was referring to Shen Yun’s retelling of real events in modern-day China and the ruling communist regime’s oppression of China’s traditional spiritual culture. Shen Yun gives the example of the plight of Falun Gong, an ancient self-cultivation practice rooted in China’s Buddhist and Taoist traditions.
Many of Shen Yun’s dancers are practitioners of Falun Gong, which teaches adherents to abide by the universal principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance in their daily lives, alongside meditation exercises for a calm mind and healthy body. But if the dancers were in China, they would be persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and many Falun Gong practitioners have been tortured or murdered on account of their peaceful spiritual beliefs. Shen Yun is also banned from performing in China.

‘There’s Divinity Within Us’

Ms. Ireland said that the spirituality presented by Shen Yun resonated with her own beliefs.

“Seeing that it’s the divine coming to earth, that really resonates because we’re all divine beings here ... that’s my belief,” she said. “I didn’t realize that was also a belief that was in China as well—I think [there’s] divinity within us all.”

Donna Ireland attends Shen Yun Performing Arts at HOTA on the Gold Coast, Australia, on Feb. 23, 2024. (Rachel Qu/The Epoch Times)
Donna Ireland attends Shen Yun Performing Arts at HOTA on the Gold Coast, Australia, on Feb. 23, 2024. Rachel Qu/The Epoch Times

The CCP regards the spiritual foundation that made up China’s traditional society as a threat to its aesthetic ideology. It persecutes faith groups and tightly controls the ones that exist there today.

“The more people that understand that that’s not the culture—the real culture is the dancing, the singing, the spiritual, and understand that—the more people can understand more about China,” Ms. Ireland said.

“My husband’s a Buddhist, so when I heard, oh my goodness, there’s violence because people are actually meditating, I was [in disbelief],” she added.

“That broke my heart because people should be free to practice what they want, whatever religion they want, and not be penalised for it. So and I think in today’s modern society, it’s crazy that that’s still happening.”

She said she was leaving Shen Yun feeling “amazed, touched, and inspired.”

“I think you can see there’s a lot of love.”

Reporting by NTD, Yang Lu, Rachel Qu, and Melanie Sun.
The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
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