MILWAUKEE—“I loved everything from the beginning to the end,” said Mrs. Jeannine Leonard.
For her birthday, Mrs. Leonard’s family brought her to see
Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Miller High Life Theatre on Feb. 18.
“I wanted to come to this for years and years … this was just the most incredible, amazing, awesome thing and I was so glad to be here!”
Having seen the advertisements for years on billboards, Mrs. Leonard was impressed that the dancers are actually “flying through the air.”
“They do that, that wasn’t … fake,” she exclaimed, “the [dancers] were really doing that!”
Based in New York,
Shen Yun Performing Arts is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company. With its flips and gentle elegance, classical Chinese dance is one of the most athletic and expressive art forms in the world.
In addition to talented dancers, Shen Yun features a live orchestra where ancient Chinese instruments such as the two-string erhu and the
pipa lead the melody amidst the traditional instruments found in a Western orchestra.
Mrs. Leonard was exceptionally impressed with the
erhu and its ability to convey a broad range of emotions.
“So much music came out of something with only two strings,” she said.
Mrs. Leonard’s son Peter, entrepreneur, was impressed with how
Shen Yun used art to convey important messages he said were both “powerful and needed.”
“I loved so many elements that showed beauty through history of the Chinese culture,” he said, “the values throughout thousands of years showed so much beauty … through art and architecture, culture and family, and [the] divine.”
Peter said that the production makes the audience question “what’s your bigger purpose? What’s your calling?”
“I thought all of that was beautiful and an important reminder where so many people are lost.”
China’s authentic culture is inseparable from its spiritual heritage—where a pantheon of divine beings, spiritual cultivators, and mythology has shaped
the culture for 5,000 years. According to Shen Yun, ancient Chinese music, medicine, calligraphy, clothing, and language were believed to have been brought down from the heavens and daily life was replete with rituals connecting man with the divine.
Mrs. Leonard’s son Mike was wowed by the company’s patented method of integrating a 3-D
animated backdrop with the stage performance. It allows the performers to remarkably travel back and forth between the stage and the background projection.
“I thought the technology was really breathtaking … I loved how in sync everything was. I think this was a very different show than I normally go to and I was really excited about what I saw … it’s great.”
Reporting by Stacey Tang and Jennifer Schneider.
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