NEW YORK—Phil Boyle, former New York state senator and assemblymember, felt touched by tranquility seeing Shen Yun Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.
“Oh it’s beautiful—the culture, the dancing, the music, it’s really memorable,” Mr. Boyle said after the April 8 matinee.
“It touches my heart to see such beautiful movements and to know the long history and culture behind it. I just hope that the message gets out to everyone,” he said.New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company, formed in 2006 with the mission to revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilization.
Mr. Boyle said he felt a “message of peace and tranquillity, and to know that the true Chinese culture is being represented in Shen Yun and that more and more Americans and people all over the world get to know it better.”
Some audience members like Mr. Boyle had known about Shen Yun’s mission before coming to the performance, but just as many audience members were surprised to discover that Shen Yun cannot be seen in China today.
Jack Kelly, CEO of an executive search firm, knew little about Shen Yun when he came to Lincoln Center at the behest of the women in the family—his wife, sister-in-law, and niece. He expected the dancers to have trained in China rather than New York, and had little interest in dance to begin with.
“It blew me away,” he said. “I was kind of reluctant at first, and I find it pretty enlightening.”
“I can appreciate the artwork, and the beauty that accompanies what they’re doing, which is pretty amazing,” he said.
“I really was impressed, it was amazing. They’re incredibly talented, beautiful. ... It’s quite amazing, the talent that these people have,” he said. And there was more than dance, Mr. Kelly added, commenting on a soprano solo.
“She was wonderful. But you know it was really interesting how, when I’m seeing the [lyrics] ... that’s what really put my attention—wait, what is going on here? Where she’s basically saying, ‘Hey, we got to stop, we got to go back to traditions’ ... that struck me,” he said.“There’s something underneath the beauty of the dance, and the colors and the outfits, that there’s some underlying.”
Reporting by Sherry Dong and Frank Liang.
The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
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