SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Financial Executive: Shen Yun a ‘Visual Spectacle’

Apr 15, 2023

LONDON—Marion King, an executive in the financial industry, attended Shen Yun Performing Arts at Eventim Apollo on April 14.

“I’m really enjoying it,” she said. I love the mix of acrobats, ballet, and music, and it’s got a really spiritual aspect to it as well.”

Based in New York, Shen Yun was founded in 2006 by leading Chinese artists and quickly became the world’s premier classical Chinese dance and music company. Shen Yun’s mission is to revive traditional Chinese culture.

She said she appreciated Chinese culture. “I was surprised that it’s an American production, not a Chinese production, and having spent a lot of time in China myself, [I thought] it was fantastic. It brings the similarities between European dance and Chinese dance, which I thought was fantastic,” she said.

King noted the focus on goodness. “I think it’s really appropriate in the modern world where we have so much friction and conflict, that to project the goodness of an individual and people is great.”

She spoke of the importance of traditional values. “I think they’re always relevant. You know: honesty, goodness, believing in people, and kindness is fundamental,” King said.

Referring to the music, King said: “It’s not sort of catchy as you would expect, but it brings that sort of sparkle, and that spirituality to the dance, and it works incredibly well with the dance.”

“In fact, because you’re watching the dance, I didn’t really focus on the music. It was more the movement on the stage and the animation as well, which was great. It was a visual spectacle,” she said.

Dancers Are Incredible and Inspiring, Dance Teacher Says

With her experience in teaching dance, Karen Jane said Shen Yun is “Incredible. The formations, the costumes, the colors, the whole philosophy that’s going on behind it. It’s amazing,” she said.

Jane noted the technical difficulty of the pieces. “It’s incredibly difficult. And just the way that they’ve put together the stage work, and the synchronicity of all. Everything is amazing. I mean, it’s very difficult to do what they’re doing. So you really appreciate it, if you’ve done this before, how difficult that is—incredible.”

“Just amazingly inspiring,” Jane said of the dancers’ training. “All that really hard work that must have gone into that performance.”

As a dance teacher, Jane considered how much the costumes play into the movement of the dance. “I’m thinking about the way that they’re using the costumes: the sleeves, the floatiness, all of the costumes, and the staging is really what I’m taking out of this, actually. So I’m definitely going to use some of that,” she said.

Jane was impressed with Chinese culture. “Incredibly, incredibly. I think everybody is looking for something that is more meaningful. And so you can get that through dance. It’s amazing.

“I think it’s incredibly inspiring. These traditional values: we need more of these today. And people are looking for that kind of thing. They’re looking for meaning in what they do.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.