SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Beautiful, ‘Mind-Boggling,’ a ‘Sense of Hope’: Stamford Audience Applauds Shen Yun

Mar 09, 2025

STAMFORD, Conn.—Steve Gold felt warmth seeing Shen Yun Performing Arts, and something optimistic.

“There was a sense of hope and there’s a sense of that the things from yesterday are still very pure today. And that’s a very nice thing,” said Mr. Gold, who runs an advertising business.

“Very entertaining, very enlightening,” he said after seeing Shen Yun at The Palace Theatre on March 8. “It’s a unique story through dance and it’s very worth seeing.”

New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s top classical Chinese dance company, with a mission to share with audiences the beauty of China before communism. Through music and dance, Shen Yun aims to revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilization.

Mr. Gold felt the performance conveyed “just peace and love, and sticking to the old virtues, and love, and God, and all that came across very well.”

Many audience members said Shen Yun was a performance of both beauty and depth.

Pardeep Sood, a physician, said the unique stagecraft and what appeared to be special effects were “mind-blowing.”

“This is beautiful. It’s mind-boggling. I think I’ve been glued to the stage all this time. I believe the second half is going to be even better,” he said during intermission.

“It’s just amazing,” he said, adding that the religious persecution Chinese people face today under the communist regime that created the need for Shen Yun’s mission was “also not lost on me.”

“I’m old enough to know what happened in Tiananmen Square, for example,” he added.

For thousands of years, the Chinese believed their culture was divinely inspired, a gift from the heavens. When the Chinese Communist Party seized power in 1949, it began launching violent campaigns every decade in an effort to root out and destroy this traditional culture.

Anca Munteanu, a marketing director, said she grew up in a communist country and understands exactly what Shen Yun is taking a stand for.

“It’s nice to see that Shen Yun is promoting faith and faith in God, and the aspiration of Chinese people, even if they don’t live in China, to be able to live their faith,” she said. “They also try to present how China looks like before communism, a beautiful culture. Beautiful culture and freedom.”

Alex Medaseasalu, IT manager, attended the performance with Ms. Munteanu and found it inspirational.

“It’s beautiful the way it’s presenting the history, thousands of [years],“ he said. ”It makes it very easy for us to understand the history of Chinese people. All in all, a very wonderful, revealing moment.”

“It’s important that still in 2025, you can bring and actualize a message, which otherwise might be lost throughout times,” he said. “And it’s beautifully and easy to understand. Doesn’t matter what age, doesn’t matter what culture, it translates to the average person. You can tell how much effort they put in this kind of show.”

Reporting by Weiyong Zhu and Catherine Yang.

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