NEW YORK CITY—Frank Dellapolla was blown away by the levels of artistry and technique in Shen Yun Performing Arts.
Having performed with ballet companies across the country and in Europe and Asia, the retired ballet dancer expressed a deep appreciation for what went into the production and what Shen Yun achieved.
“The artistry is impeccable,” said Mr. Dellapolla after seeing Shen Yun at Lincoln Center on April 6.
“First of all, you didn’t know what to expect. It was something that, you know, you come in, you see the commercials, you see the people outside, but it opens up this whole cultural heritage that you didn’t know existed with the old age in China, and it gives a different perspective on what’s going on over there now, and what’s going on over here, and how it reflects,” Mr. Dellapolla said.
“I’ve performed for decades, and to see these guys out there doing every show, my mom was saying, she was amazed at how they can go on stage and do that so consistently, so precisely, so beautifully. It is a massively ballad, wonderful, deep, and important artistic statement,” Mr. Dellapolla said.
Mr. Dellapolla, who has performed at the same David H. Koch Theatre he attended Sunday afternoon as well as the MetOpera theater next door, is married to a ballet dancer and his son is a dancer as well, “so for us, as classical dancers, this is just amazing.”
“Their skills are impeccable, they’re classically trained,” he said, remarking on the beautiful technique he saw. “The feet are beautiful, the women have that incredible extension and the ability to control and move.
“But it’s, you know, you can’t look at just one thing. You have to look at the overall package. The artistry is complete, right? It’s a very complete package,” Mr. Dellapolla said.
He said the dancers were able to express and project the stories they told, from across thousands of years of Chinese history, so that anyone from any background could understand.
Mr. Dellapolla said that what he and possibly many others don’t realize from only watching Shen Yun commercials is that what the artists are sharing is not “only Chinese.”
“It is the expression of a more ancient cultural Chinese sense of Buddhism, religion, heritage, free [from] communism, which I think for a lot of us in this country now is important because this country has become so dry and so devoid of spirituality and too easily taken in by socialism, communism, that they really need to learn how important, how pristine, how deep things were before communism.
“That was one of the better messages in the show, I think. A lot of the people in the West would be surprised because they wouldn’t have that knowledge of what’s coming in. So that comes through on top of the impeccable artistry,” Mr. Dellapolla said.
