TORONTO—For Janet Sherbanowski, Shen Yun Performing Arts, through its colourful and exhilarating performance, portrays China in a way that she hasn’t seen done elsewhere.
Ms. Sherbanowski, executive director of the community group Crime Prevention Association of Toronto, found the show to be unique “from the perspective of seeing parts of China that we don’t see in the media, parts that exist but are not applauded anymore.”
She watched the performance of Shen Yun at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts on Friday evening.
“China has a beautiful past culture that is based on all these different groups from the Song dynasty, the Han, all the different parts of China that come together to make an amazing people,” Ms. Sherbanowski said, referring to Shen Yun’s portrayal of dance pieces set in the past and present and from different ethnic groups in China.
“This show portrays the amazing people of China.”
Ms. Sherbanowski, who travelled to China some years ago, said she finds the country to have an “amazing culture” and “warm, beautiful, and wonderful people” who need to “rediscover the soul of their culture.”
And that’s why she appreciates Shen Yun, which she said can help Chinese people to reconnect with their past.
According to Shen Yun’s website, the New York-based classical Chinese dance and music company has taken as its mission to revive 5,000 years of divinely inspired Chinese culture which has been suppressed after decades of communist rule in China.
Through the show, said Ms. Sherbanowski, she could see parts of China’s past.
“You can see the buildings, you can see the roads, you can see the beauty everywhere that has inspired China to be 5,000 years of culture,” she said.
“But when I was there in the ‘90s, you could also see that there is a lack of understanding of where all of this came from, why this beauty exists. But there’s an appreciation of the beauty, and hopefully this type of programming will get through and help people to revisit their past.”
During her visit to China, she could see traces of the beauty and elements presented in the show to some extent, but she said they have been “dulled” and people didn’t have as much ability to “be free and laugh.”
“I had the opportunity to visit people in their homes and experience that. But outside of it, there wasn’t so much an experience of that.”
Having seen the show, Ms. Sherbanowski said she saw that one needs to revisit the past in order to discover the future.
“I think every culture—Canadian, U.S., China, Russia—everyone can benefit from revisiting their past, because that’s where the seeds of our souls come from.”
Through watching Shen Yun she also saw that “you need to revive your connection to other people, your connection to the divine, your connection to neighbours.”
She said all aspects of the show were wonderful, from the music accompanying the dances played by the Shen Yun Orchestra, to the colours and dance movements.
“I thought it was amazing; I thought the choreography is so gentle and moving.”
At times it seemed as though the performers were “driven by a force perhaps outside of themselves,” Ms. Sherbanowski said.
“There are forces outside of ourselves that can bring us back together through culture, through dance, through music.”
She was particularly impressed by a dance piece depicting the persecution of the adherents of the spiritual group Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa) in today’s China. A campaign of persecution was launched against Falun Gong, whose teachings are rooted in ancient Chinese culture, by the Chinese regime in 1999.
“I think it takes a tremendous amount of courage to bring these things forward. And this type of production does that, it helps people see what is going on in other places in the world through a very gentle way.”
From the performance, Ms. Sherbanowski said she will take home a “renewed love of Chinese culture.”
Reporting by NTD Television and Omid Ghoreishi
Shen Yun Performing Arts International Company is in Toronto for four more performances at Sony Centre for the Performing Arts.
For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org.
