SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Shen Yun Brought ‘A Lot of New Things to Light’ About China, Says Investor

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Shen Yun Brought ‘A Lot of New Things to Light’ About China, Says Investor
John Budnik and his daughter enjoyed Shen Yun at The State Theatre at Playhouse Square, in Cleveland, on the afternoon of Feb. 4, 2023. Stacey Tang/The Epoch Times
CLEVELAND—John Budnik, a real estate investor, had been mildly familiar with Chinese culture, but seeing Shen Yun Performing Arts brought “a lot of new things to light.”

“It’s very interesting,” he said at The State Theatre at Playhouse Square in Cleveland on the afternoon of Feb. 4. Mr. Budnik attended the performance with his young daughter, as a celebration for her birthday.

New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company and takes as its mission to revive 5,000 years of China’s divinely inspired civilization.
Mr. Budnik said he had read about the history of China, but text and imagination could not compare with Shen Yun’s artful rendition.

“It brings it alive with the music and the dance,” Mr. Budnik said. “There’s a sort of lost grandeur ... It was very impactful how beautiful it all was.”

Mr. Budnik said he’s Christian himself, and could relate to many spiritual themes in the traditional Chinese culture he saw on stage, including “the idea that we’re incarnated beings.”

He felt these traditional and spiritual values were something Shen Yun inspired people to recover in the modern day, such as “perseverance ... in a culture of instant gratification.”

“I think we’ve lost a lot of tradition,” he said. “I think a lot of people are lost today without having those roots, you know? ... I feel like we need that. We need to get back to something that’s a little more solid.”

Also in attendance was Kevin Puls, president of ACRT, the only national independent utility vegetation management consulting firm, who, too, saw a side of China he hadn’t encountered before.

Mr. Puls attended the performance with his son, who loves history and “was extraordinarily excited” when he realized they would be seeing Shen Yun.

“What we hear coming from China’s is usually negative,” Mr. Puls explained. “It’s just really wonderful to see that there’s different sides of the culture in China and the history may still get to prevail a little bit with everything that’s going on.”

“It’s really cool to see the very young people that are participating in this and obviously have worked very, very hard and are very passionate about the message that they’re sharing,” he said.

Mr. Puls said that prior to the performance, he hadn’t known much about China beyond the fact that it was one of the oldest societies, and that modern China was often headlined by bad news.

“So it’s really interesting to see a lot about their history,” he said.

What he saw were universal themes he felt passionate about too, like sharing different views and coming to mutual understanding.

“It really seems to lead to be a lot about love and about understanding, and about acceptance of different ways of life and different views,” he said. “It really just paints a different side of, of what possibly is going on, and that there are some people that are trying to share a different perspective, and to see and love people outside of their traditional comfort zone.”

Reporting by Stacey Tang.
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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