Ballet dancer Emma Helgesen attended with her parents Jeanna and Bryan Helgesen. If the world is still reeling from a pandemic, you wouldn’t know it from the jubilation on the Helgesen’s faces.
They came for Emma’s and Jeanna’s birthdays—Emma’s especially as she had just closed on the ‘Nutcracker’ and is currently preparing to perform in the ballet ‘Don Quixote.’ Emma had been dancing since she was 2 and a half years old.
“The quality was superb!” Emma said. “All of the dancers were just so amazing and incredible. They appeared very confident. I could tell that they really enjoyed what they were doing and they love their culture.”
For Bryan, every scene was beautiful.
“Each country in society has its own cultures. Here in the United States, we’re kind of a melting pot of many cultures and each culture has its own beauty, so I think it’s very important to be able to express freely the values and traditions of your own culture—in this case, the Chinese culture,” he said.For Bryan, Shen Yun offered a different perspective on China.
“In the news, we only hear about the communist perspective of the world and China,” he said. “It (the performance) made me feel very happy for the Chinese people. I think the Chinese people are beautiful and I like them. I like the messages that the performance sent as well.”
‘Feel Good’
Semi-retired jazz musician Adam Johnston came to see Shen Yun for the second time.
“You feel good when you see this show,” he said. He was impressed by the East-meets-West orchestra. Some of the key Chinese instruments that feature in the music are the two-stringed erhu, the pipa, and the bugle-like suona.
“It’s probably hard to combine. That’s the beauty—that you are able to combine the Eastern instruments with the Western instruments and make a beautiful sound and do it for a whole show is very good,” he said.
It brought to his mind a quote from Martin Luther, who once said that “next to the Bible, ‘music deserves the highest praise.' So that’s the value of music, whether it’s in the Chinese tradition there or wherever good music is good for the soul.”
Reporting by Sally Sun.The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.