MONTREAL—Company CEO and lawyer Robert Dubé described Shen Yun Performing Arts as a time machine that transports the audience to a better era when he attended the opening show with his family at the Place des Arts on April 9.
He said he was also very impressed by the skill of the artists. “They’re talented and they have beautiful choreography. ... I find it graceful when they dance,” he said. “It inspires me.”
Before the communist party’s spread of atheism, Chinese people were very spiritual and had a deep belief in the divine. For thousands of years, their values and day-to-day actions were strictly governed by the teachings of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism.
Mr. Dubé said he appreciated the performers’ effort and thought the evening was very educational.
“It’s very good because we’re discovering a period that me and my children didn’t know about. Even less so because we’re more familiar with the current communist era,” he said.
“[Shen Yun] brings us back to this period in Chinese history—a beautiful period. So, we have to go and discover China now. It’s important to learn a bit about Chinese history. ... It’s much more poetic, the China of the past than modern China,” he added.
He said he would be taking home with him the “value of love, value of peace, value of sharing, and also some hard values.”
According to its website, the name “Shen Yun” translates directly into “the beauty of divine beings dancing.” He said his family couldn’t agree more.
“It’s really inspiring, they have a spiritual side. You feel that the divine is present, and it’s a way of returning to the divine to go through this period of ages that China has lived through,” Mr. Dubé said.
Given the chance, he would like to urge Shen Yun artists to “continue to do this mission, which is very inspiring and brings peace and love.”
