SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Composer Says Shen Yun Is a Once in a Lifetime Experience

May 14, 2022

FUESSEN, Germany—Music is the flow of notes through time and Shen Yun Performing Arts takes that timing to a whole new level with its live orchestra timed perfectly to fit with dancers and a digital backdrop.

Graham Waterhouse is a composer and cellist who was from London, now living in Munich, Germany.

He was particularly impressed with the way all the components of Shen Yun fit together so flawlessly.

“Amazingly well-rehearsed! I know how long it takes to find coordination between the stage, the music, and the graphic art on top of that, the very highest level and remarkable!”

Shen Yun is based in New York and its orchestra is comprised of a classical Western orchestra while highlighting traditional Chinese instruments like the pipa and erhu.

“The music was very colorful, so beautifully orchestrated,” said Mr. Waterhouse. “I was rather focused on the dancing, which was so amazingly brought together and so perfectly rehearsed.”

Shen Yun’s dancers are trained in classical Chinese dance and many audience members associate the tumbling techniques present in the performance with gymnastics or acrobatics but they actually originate from classical Chinese dance.

“Also these acrobatics. As a child I also did gymnastics and that reminded me [of it]. [This is] a once in a lifetime experience. I hope it will last long and that it will continue to inspire audiences in many cities around the world!”

“You definitely get this energy, especially through the movement of the dancers,” he continued.

“These acrobatics pleased me the most because you experience such an uplifting feeling when they dance. And they do it so skillfully that you seem to experience non-gravity for a second as if there were no gravity as if you were without weight. And that is an uplifting feeling to watch!”

‘Another World’

3D animators, Silke Holzach and her husband were also in the audience. Before working at home with her husband, Ms. Holzach was in charge of video animation for the Bavarian State Opera.

“It is another world that is so different from here at home. [It] is really another dream world in which I was taken on a little journey,” described Ms. Holzach.

Shen Yun uses a patented, animated projection to extend the stage endlessly and allow the dancers to enter different worlds and different times.

“I found it especially exciting because in the past at the theater it was especially important for me to see how you can connect this virtual world with the real world—that fascinated me very much,” said Ms. Holzach.

“I found it incredibly beautiful how the dancers always jumped in and how they then continued into the video, I found that very nicely implemented. I liked it very much.”

She said that Shen Yun had left her inspired.

“I felt very inspired. I found it incredibly beautiful to see, also to hear, how the beauty of the dance, the beauty of the movement was brought close to the audience and I felt really carried away. I liked very much that the dancers could carry you away with their radiance, with their smile, with the costumes, with the music. I found it very beautiful,” she said.

Ms. Holzach shared her appreciation for Shen Yun’s unique use of color.

“What I liked very much was this other color world that I perceived here, which is different from what we do. I liked that the color saturation was incredibly intense. I’ve never been to an Asian country but I imagine that nature there is really so incredibly intense and colorful and that thrilled me. [It] really carried me away.”

Reporting by NTD and Maria Han.

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