SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Actress Lauds Shen Yun for Expressing ‘Values That Were Very Important in Today’s World’

Jan 16, 2025

LONDON—Emmy award-winning actress Susan Hampshire, who attended a Shen Yun Performing Arts show in London on Jan. 12, is no stranger to the stage. Her performing savvy stems from several decades as a leading actress in plays and on British television, meanwhile, being a charity executive, she is also concerned with promoting good values.

Ms. Hampshire said that what she saw in Shen Yun that evening demonstrated capacities in both arenas: performing and values.

“I thought that it was very much to do with good and bad,” she said, speaking of the traditional morals the performance expresses. “To do with being good.”

Ms. Hampshire—who, besides being a celebrated actress, spent decades promoting health and children’s education through work in numerous organizations—noted the performance dealt with China’s current situation. She said, “[Shen Yun] had a lot of values that were very important in today’s world.”

Since 2006, New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has embarked on a mission: “to revive a culture that was almost lost” and “share it with the world,” the company’s website states.

It further states, “Over the past decades, the Chinese Communist Party has treated traditional culture as a threat to its rule. Through campaigns like the Cultural Revolution, it has systematically uprooted traditional beliefs and destroyed ancient treasures, bringing 5,000 years of civilization to the brink of extinction.”

Of this mission, Ms. Hampshire commented on the fact that Shen Yun’s dances feature aspects of Chinese culture from across various regions of the Middle Kingdom as well as both its past and present.

“[Shen Yun] gave us such a history of dance in China,“ she said. ”I found it really interesting.”

On a more artistic note, she described the dancers’ athleticism and how beautifully they jumped. “Their extension with their legs is wonderful, their balance is so good,” she said.

Then the London actress mentioned how the musical accompaniment made an impression: “I thought it was a fantastic orchestra, they were really great,” she said.

Having starred in a leading role alongside Kirk Douglas in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” the musical, and having won an Emmy for her role in “The Forsyte Saga” on British TV, Ms. Hampshire knows a thing or two about stories.

“[Shen Yun is] telling a story, which I didn’t know [would be the case,]” she said. “I found it very interesting and very satisfying.”

Reporting by NTD and Michael Wing.

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