CALGARY, Canada—Stephanie Ing, a hobbyist dancer who spent over a decade exploring many different dance styles, was delighted by the Shen Yun Performing Arts performance at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium on March 12.
“It was every bit as beautiful as I expected,” said Ms. Ing. “The choreography was just perfect and beautiful and very expressive. It was wonderful to see a new type of dance I’ve never seen before. It was wonderful.”
Based in New York,
Shen Yun was founded in 2006 and quickly became the world’s premier classical Chinese dance and music company. Now with eight equally sized companies touring the world simultaneously,
Shen Yun’s mission is to revive traditional Chinese culture.
Ms. Ing said she found herself moved to tears by Shen Yun’s performance. She added that her husband was Chinese and that she planned to bring their twin children to see
Shen Yun next year.
“I want to help my children understand the other part of their
heritage,” said Ms. Ing. “They … need to understand what their roots are, and I think the more that we can learn about that, we learn where we’ve come from and where we need to go with our lives.”
Ms. Ing said she also wanted her friends to see
Shen Yun, as she saw the performance to be a good opportunity for them to learn more about China.
“I want them to come and see this,” said Ms. Ing. “If they come to see it just for the dance and the beauty, then they will have the opportunity to also understand
the culture and see the truth of what is going on these days. They don’t believe it from the news, [but] this could get through to them.”
While Shen Yun’s performance focuses on presenting China before communism, there are also story-based dances that depict modern-day China’s oppressive communist government and its persecution of
followers of faith. Ms. Ing found this a very important takeaway and saw its relevance to societies outside of China.
“People are being suppressed, the truth is being suppressed, freedom is being taken. Not just from the Chinese people. It’s happening here too, and if we don’t stand up—it will happen here too.”
Ms. Ing said she was impressed by the performers’ ability “to communicate everything—largely the emotion. They are able to depict the story so well that you can see what is happening, and they’ve put a lot of work into that performance. How they coordinate that with
the video in the background, the perfection of that is amazing [and] unique.”
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