ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.—“It’s fantastic,” said Maya Mouis, who owns Maya’s Models Management in St. Petersburg. She had just seen Shen Yun Performing Arts International Company at the Mahaffey Theater on April 28.
New York-based Shen Yun, with three touring companies, features classical Chinese dance, folk and ethnic Chinese dance, and stories and legends from China’s ancient culture as well as from contemporary times.
“I don’t even know how they can do that,” Ms. Mouis said of the dancers. “It’s really, really beautiful.”
She said she and her husband have a business in Paris too. “I’m also a fashion designer, so I like the colors, and it’s really something beautiful.” “I really like how they put all this together. It’s fantastic. It’s really nice,” she said.
A model herself, Ms. Mouis added: “I like the makeup. I like all this—the shoes, the boots. .... That’s really very nice.” As a designer, she said she had gotten some ideas for her summer collection.
The animated digital backdrop fascinated her grandson. “He’s crazy about that big fish, how it can jump in the river,” she said, referring to the dance Sand Monk Is Blessed, which is based on an episode in the Chinese classic Journey to the West. The dance tells the story of a shape-shifting ogre who kidnaps a young girl.
Her grandson thought the animated backdrop that showed the ogre emerging as a monstrous fish was really cool and wanted to know how the fish jumped in the river.
“With state-of-the-art graphics technology, Shen Yun’s digital-backdrop team creates vividly animated settings, extending the stage and transporting the audience,” the Shen Yun website explains.
“These digital backdrop designs complement and synchronize all aspects of the performance: the characters, color of the costumes, specific dance movements, props, lighting, the story being told, particular notes played by the orchestra, and special audio effects,” the website states.
The stories told through dance and the backdrops interested Ms. Mouis. “The stories are interesting because it’s a 5,000-year culture,” she said.
“It’s interesting to put all this together, to tell the people how it really is,” she said, referring to the dance An Unexpected Encounter. The dance portrays the battle between good and evil as it is playing out in today’s China, with the Chinese regime targeting Falun Gong, a spiritual self-cultivation practice, for elimination.
“I’m formerly from a communist country [the Czech Republic]. I escaped from this [communism], so I know exactly what that means. It’s no fun,” she said.
China’s traditional culture was almost lost under decades of communist rule, which sought to replace the traditional beliefs and values with communist ideology. In 2006, classical Chinese artists came together in New York with the aim of reviving the true Chinese culture and sharing it with the world, according to the Shen Yun website.
Reporting by Teresa Liu and Louise Rothman
New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has three touring companies that perform simultaneously around the world. For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org.
The Epoch Times considers Shen Yun Performing Arts the significant cultural event of our time. We have proudly covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
