GREELEY, Colo.—It’s not often that a stage performance gives audience members a spiritual experience, but judging by the comments from audience members at a matinee on July 31 in Greeley, Colorado, Shen Yun Performing Arts has achieved just that.
Mark Patterson, principal attorney at Patterson Rutledge & Associates LLC, said he appreciated how the performance was inspired by the performers’ faith.
“I certainly believe there’s a divine source of energy in joy, in art, in life,” he said. “And when you see something joyful and beautiful filling people, they can create tremendous art, and there’s a lot of despair and ugliness in our art and culture today, and it’s wonderful to see this expression of joy and beauty and respect for the deeper sources of art.”
“Most of us don’t know the challenge to our own culture, much less the threat to traditional Chinese culture, and we’re delighted to be here and learn so much about this great tradition and how it’s been strangled in its homeland.”
Tom Feldman, a business manager in operations at a media company, also came away from the performance with a new, more spiritual perspective on China.
“Normally, you don’t think of that as Chinese culture, because we’re always taught in this current generation that it’s the communist regime, so we don’t associate that with the spiritualness,” Feldman said. He expressed his hope that the true culture of China be preserved.
“I think they need to be able to bring back who they are as a people, and what their culture is and what they’ve expressed over the many years in life,” Feldman said. Feldman attended the performance with his wife, Rachel, who said the dancers’ artistry brought her to tears.
“The beauty of what our bodies are capable of, by what our Creator made us to be—it’s amazing,” she said.
Emily Sonmore was also blown away by what she saw, which she described as “above par,” and “excellent and elegant.”
Now retired, Sonmore once danced and sang in church groups.
“The Lord is the Creator of all the beauty that is in the earth,” she said. “And in every culture, He has gifted every culture and every nation with strengths that the rest of the world needs to see because God didn’t make just one kind of people. He made many people, and we need to be able to love one another, and see the gifts that God has given for every culture.”