JACKSON, Miss.—Terry Wages, the executive director of the Mississippi State Fire Academy, was struck by the perfection of Shen Yun Performing Arts when he watched it with his wife on Jan. 31 at the Thalia Mara Hall.
“What impressed me the most is the perfection of the performance,” said Mr. Wages. “The dancers—I’ve been watching and watching, and they don’t make mistakes. It’s just perfection. I’m amazed by that. I find myself wondering how they get to that level. The training must be tremendous.”
Based in New York, Shen Yun was founded in 2006 by leading Chinese artists and quickly became the world’s premier classical Chinese dance and
music company. Over the years, it has grown from one to eight equally-sized companies that tour the world simultaneously. Shen Yun’s mission is to revive traditional Chinese culture and to present the beauty of China before communism.
“I find that the traditions and culture is amazing,” said Mr. Wages. He said that he read in Shen Yun’s brochures that China has 5,000 years of history, and that
Shen Yun was working to keep Chinese culture, tradition, and dance alive, to which he asked rhetorically, “Who can not appreciate that?”
“You can’t watch something like this and not appreciate the culture, tradition of it. It is just an amazing show … One thing that this really brings forward about China is the beauty. That’s one thing that comes to my mind. The beauty, the scenery, the
landscape, the colors.”
In addition to a number of dance vignettes,
Shen Yun’s program also includes songs performed in Chinese in the traditional bel canto style. Mr. Wages enjoyed the soprano’s performance, and found himself eagerly reading the lyrics’ English translation that was displayed on the backdrop. The lyrics urged a return to
tradition and reflected some of the spiritual elements of traditional Chinese culture.
“Not only her singing, but [her] eagerness was amazing,” said Mr. Wages. “I was trying to track, pick up on words because I am fascinated by other languages anyway. The way she expressed that in her tone, the change in her tone was amazing. You can tell when emotions came in. For example, when you think about heaven, you think about beauty, paradise, peacefulness, and you can pick that up in her tone, when she speaks that word.”
“It’s very inspirational.”
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