OTTAWA—Wayne Bishop, a government manager, and Annette Patel, a retired engineer, watched Shen Yun Performing Arts at the National Arts Centre on April 19.
“I thought it was wonderful,” Mr. Bishop said. “It was magical—the costumes, the choreography, the storytelling ... I thought they were fantastic.”
New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance and music company. China was once a country that flourished in art, culture, and spirituality, yet many of those elements were destroyed or abolished when the atheistic Chinese Communist Party seized power in 1949.
Many of Shen Yun’s founders and performers experienced oppression and even persecution for their beliefs in the Chinese spiritual and meditation practice Falun Gong, and were forced to flee their homeland. Since its inception in 2006, Shen Yun’s mission has been to revive traditional Chinese culture and show audiences the beauty of “China before communism.”
“I didn’t realize that this was not actually ... from China and that actually they’re being persecuted in China for this type of thing, so it’s a bit of a shame that great history and tradition is not being expressed the way maybe it should be,” Mr. Bishop said.Mr. Bishop saw similarities between the spirituality in traditional Chinese culture and Christianity, which he grew up with in the West. Both he and Ms. Patel felt that there was a lot to take away from the performance.
“It’s a great cultural expression of Chinese art, and storytelling, and history,” Mr. Bishop said. “I think anyone would love this production, actually.”
Ms. Patel wished to “say a big thank you” to the performers.
“I really think that they really put their heart and soul into it,” she said. “I think it was amazing. The fact that it changes over every year is really something else as well. If you keep the same groove year after year ... I can’t believe how much they worked on that. That was fantastic.”
“I marveled at the talent, and I just thought they were wonderful, really talented people,” Mr. Bishop said.
