SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Atlanta Theatergoers See Important Lesson for Americans in Shen Yun

Jan 07, 2024

ATLANTA, Ga.—Kent Buchanan, a physical therapist, and his wife Valerie Buchanan, a retired teacher, watched Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Atlanta Symphony Hall on Jan. 6. The couple said they enjoyed the stories that were told in Shen Yun’s performance.

“The storytelling in the form of dance is a lost art that was brought to life today,” Mr. Buchanan said.

Based in New York, Shen Yun was founded in 2006 by leading Chinese artists who made it their mission to revive traditional Chinese culture through authentic classical Chinese dance and music. Since its inception, Shen Yun has expanded from one to eight equally-sized companies that tour the world simultaneously, showcasing the beauty of Chinese culture before it was attacked and demolished by the Chinese Communist Party.

Mr. Buchanan said that he believes Shen Yun is very valuable to the current American society.

“America has long been known as a very free country, and I think we are finding ourselves with censorship, with division, with strife; slowly seeing incredible, incredible controls put over our everyday freedoms. The storytelling that we saw today with the Shen Yun performance talks about a time of freedom before the suppression of the communist regime. So, I think it’s storytelling in reverse—your historical country versus ours.”

According to Shen Yun’s website, traditional Chinese culture is rooted in the spiritual teachings of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, and the Chinese people believed that their culture was a gift from the Heavens. However, these beliefs were abolished when the communist party seized power and enforced their ideology on the Chinese people.

Mr. Buchanan felt there was a lesson to be learned from China’s fall to communism.

“The expressions and the storytelling unique to this culture and the Chinese are very similar to our culture and freedom as we came up as a young country,” he said. “China has a history of 5,000 years. Our country has a very short history comparatively.”

“It’s similar freedoms, it’s similar storytelling. And now, we’re seeing increased censorship and loss of freedom at an individual level in our country now. We should learn from what happened in China with communism. We’re not learning.”

Mrs. Buchanan added that Shen Yun showed a version of China that many Americans are unfamiliar with and agreed that America could learn from what has happened to China.

“I think [Shen Yun] shows what your culture was like before the communists took over as opposed to what we were taught about Chinese,” she said. “You know, we were taught to fear the Chinese. We didn’t see that part of the culture. I think it can also be a forewarning for us as Americans that this is what’s going to happen to you if you don’t get a hold of your country.”

Reporting by Frank Liang and Wandi Zhu.

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