SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Florida Mayor Moved by Beauty of Traditional Chinese Culture in Shen Yun

Jan 14, 2025

LAKELAND, Fla.—Real estate investors Bob and Cookie Plaisted had followed news of Shen Yun Performing Arts for years and long wanted to attend a performance.

So when tickets went on sale for the 2025 season, Mr. Plaisted, mayor of Inverness, Florida, asked his daughter to help him purchase a pair of tickets. But for weeks, her answer was always that she was still looking and still couldn’t find tickets, that all nearby cities were sold out.

Unbeknownst to Mr. Plaisted, his wife had already purchased a pair of tickets for them to see the performance in Lakeland, Florida, about an hour and a half south of Inverness, and asked their daughter to keep mum before she gifted her husband the tickets for Christmas.

“Which is the best ever,” Mr. Plaisted said after seeing the performance on Jan. 14 at the Youkey Theatre. “If you were further away we still would have gone to see you.”

“Oh, we just loved it,” Mrs. Plaisted said. “It was just beautiful.”

New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company, and since its inception in 2006, it has grown to encompass eight simultaneously touring groups that bring a performance of China before communism to nearly 1 million audience members a year.

Mr. Plaisted said the chance to see the culture of China before communism was precisely what drew the couple to see the performance.

Both Christians who are strong in their faith, the Plaisteds said they understood how central faith is to people and how important religious freedom is. They said they strongly supported Shen Yun’s mission to revive the 5,000 years of Chinese civilization, which is deeply spiritual and said to be divinely inspired, and condemned the Chinese communist regime’s persecution of people of faith.

“It came through very strongly, the culture of China. It’s just a shame that you can’t go to China and perform,” Mrs. Plaisted said.

“What is quite interesting is that the beauty that was demonstrated, and also in some of the dances, the persecution that was demonstrated,“ Mr. Plaisted said. ”So it gives a clear message to those in the U.S. about what’s going on, so we appreciate that.”

“On our earth, we have evil and good,” Mr. Plaisted said, and the Chinese communist regime was “part of the evil side,” he said.

“And we need to continue to fight evil,” he said.

The Plaisteds said their experience was well worth the wait, and Mr. Plaisted would be saying as much during next week’s city council meeting.

“As the mayor, I can say I came to this show, and I think everybody should come see it,” he said. “I will say it next Tuesday.”

Reporting by NTD 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.