Cupertino is a city bursting with diversity, with many people attracted to the city for its abundance of high-tech jobs. The Divine Performing Arts (DPA) show added to that diversity this week by bringing traditional Chinese culture on stage through the medium of dance and performing arts. A very ethnically and culturally diverse audience came to the performance on Jan. 15 at the Flint Center on the De Anza College campus.
Among the audience was Suresh, manager of a software company. He and his wife came to know something about China when they backpacked through the country for about six months several years ago.
He reflected on the show, “I am enjoying it very much—the visuals and the color are very beautiful. But as I was saying, that one of the unique things is that there’s a lot of spiritual and historical content and I like that very much.”
The spiritual aspect, he said, “makes [the performance] richer ... this is quite unique.”
DPA brings elements and stories that come from Chinese antiquity which are philosophically known to contain much value and lore.
Suresh was interested in the stories, “I come from India and found a couple of items very interesting; the traveler going in search of scriptures is very interesting.”
Suresh connected with the tale called The Monkey King Triumphs where one of Chinese history’s most beloved characters, Monkey King, springs to life in this adaptation of a scene from the 16th century novel Journey to the West. The protagonist, a Buddhist monk, is traveling to India in search of scriptures, joined by an ogre, a pig, and a miraculous monkey met en route. The storyline reflects the melding of the magical, moral, and mundane so common in the traditional Chinese novel.
“I see the long parallels between the two countries which were neighbors for many years.”
He liked watching the performance itself, and the performers, saying, “They are very pretty to watch ... I am watching all the clothes, the dress... they are young and are very nice to watch. I like the lotus flower coming from the Buddha’s hand. Some [dances] are very active [and] funny ... some were more sublime dances—it was very nice.”
Two of the dances mention the the spiritual cultivation system known as Falun Dafa, which a lot of the performers practice. Suresh said, “I think the world needs more spirituality.”
He believes that “it doesn’t matter what path you follow, its a good thing, and I am very happy to see that.”
Suresh’s wife, Shrilata, a dance company owner, was also taken by the show and her positive reaction evident: “Its beautiful—the choreography, the costumes, the dances themselves—they are extremely beautiful, very well talented, very well practiced and beautifully choreographed.”
Divine Performing Arts (DPA), which is based in New York, is a nonprofit organization consisting of world-class dancers, choreographers, and musicians that is independent of China’s communist regime. It aims to revive the ancient culture and traditions of China’s 5,000-year-old civilization that were suppressed or eliminated during the Cultural Revolution.
Shrilata found this show remarkable, “The fact that Buddhism is in involved and a lot of spirituality included in this.”
Her favorite pieces were the ones with drums, the Monkey King, the poet Li Bai, and she was touched by the persecution story.
Please see DivinePerformingArts.org for more information.
