SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Shen Yun Dancers ‘Out of This World,’ Says Dance Professor

Mar 06, 2023

LOGROÑO, Spain—Karmele Pascual, dance professor, came to witness classical Chinese dance in its most authentic form at the RiojaForum on March 5, catching New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts’ last performance in Logroño, Spain.

“Wow,” she said. “Out of this world, really out of this world, yes, and the choreography was impressive; there were moments of choreography that leave you very scared that everything is so perfect.”

Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company, credited with the revival of this ancient art form developed over thousands of years.

Ms. Pascual’s dance training and background is also classical, which she says all artists who dedicate themselves to dance begin with. She teaches a variety of genres, but is dedicated to classical Spanish dance, and she has worked all over Spain. Having spent years performing before teaching, she marveled at the incredible difficulty of the classical Chinese dance performed.

“I found it impressive,” she said. “We know that dance is very hard and that you have to work hard, but you can really see that there is a work [as a group], yes, both in choreography, as in personal work of each one, you see something tremendous. I loved it.”

“You can see that it is much more complicated than classical dance ,” she explained, referring to the high-difficulty tumbling techniques that are a part of a classical Chinese dancer’s training. “All these things, the tumbling ... I found this work impressive.”

“I loved it, I really loved it,” she said. “The traditional dances, you can see it has a lot of rooting, it has a lot of rooting with the country, with what it belongs to.”

“I liked the Mongolian one very much, but all of them, the traditional dances, I liked them because you can see that they have roots, a power of the country, it is very noticeable in the movement and expression of the people, of the dancers,” she said.

Surprising to some, China is actually home to 50-plus ethnic minority groups, and every year Shen Yun programs a number of ethnic and folk dances such as the Mongolian ethnic dance Ms. Pascual referenced.

She felt it obvious that the dancers trained in more than technique, and said it touched her heart.

“It is noticeable, because every dancer has to come from within, and here it is even more noticeable because when everyone coordinates, you can see that they live it,” she said.

“Dancing is living and expressing, so logically this is what you see here, and what you feel here.”

“This dance is very hard, and so it needs a lot of training here [the heart] and the body. So that is what is noticeable,“ she said. ”The staging is total beauty, that is clear. And the work they do is logically out of this world.”

Reporting by Haiying Wang.

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