SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

‘I Have Always Wanted to See Shen Yun,’ Says Interior Designer and Dancer

Apr 09, 2023

ADELAIDE, Australia–Having seen Shen Yun Performing Arts’ advertisements for many years, Daniel Stanning, a senior interior designer at Architectus, an architectural firm based in Australia and New Zealand, had always wanted to see the world-class performance.

On April 9, Mr. Stanning’s wish came true when he got to watch Shen Yun perform at the Adelaide Festival Centre.

As an interior designer, Mr. Stanning was impressed by the way Shen Yun used colours and costumes to tell its stories.

“The colours are beautiful. I didn’t expect them to be so vibrant and so beautiful, and I think the integration of both the video behind and all of the costumes works so beautifully together to really create an atmosphere,” he said.

The matinee was also the first time Mr. Stanning saw the specific way Shen Yun uses an animated backdrop, and he loved seeing the dancers interact with it.

“I think what I loved was how integrated it was into the performance, like how the performers would actually jump into it and jump out of it,” he said.

The animated backdrop, which is invented and patented by Shen Yun, employs state-of-the-art graphics technology to provide striking scenery and allow interaction with the dancers, providing a greater depth to the stories.

“And the timing of it was so perfect, and how they used the backdrop to write the characters [for the audience to see]. It was woven together very, very well.”

During the two-hour journey, Mr. Stanning was also mesmerised by the erhu, a traditional Chinese musical instrument with thousands of years of history.

“I just drifted away for a minute while I was hearing it because it was so beautiful. It takes you to another place,” he said, noting that the erhu has only two strings but a sound that can travel very far.

While appreciating the history-rich stories depicted by Shen Yun’s dancers, Mr. Stanning believed said he felt Shen Yun’s mission is important: to tell the stories of the past so that they did not disappear.

“A lot of the stories I saw today I haven’t heard before,“ he said. ”So I think it’s wonderful that through performances like this, all the stories can live on. And we can continue to share and learn from them.”

Shen Yun’s mission is to revive the 5,000 years of Chinese culture, and the performing art company is trying to give the global audience a glimpse of what China was like before the communist regime almost destroyed its culture.

As a dancer who has done ballroom dancing and ballet for a long time, Mr. Stanning said he could tell that all of Shen Yun’s dancers were “dancing from the heart.”

“You could see there was a lot of passion in their storytelling and the way they move. You could see it in their bodies. So I love to see that,” he said.

Mr. Stanning also found that in classical Chinese dance, there is a lot of expression carried by every part of the dancers’ bodies, from the head to toes and fingertips.

“I love watching their hands, and their feet and their heads, and how they present themselves. I noticed every little bit of it, and it was beautiful,” he said.

Reporting by Rachel Qu and Alfred Bui.

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