TOURS, France—Régis La Combe stepped “back in time” through China’s 5,000-year history watching Shen Yun Performing Arts with his wife at the Palais des Congrès on Feb. 10.
“It’s full of color and very exciting,” said Mr. La Combe, former army officer.
His wife, Laure, said Shen Yun was “very elegant, very pretty, very light. There’s a lot of work, and you realize that there’s a lot of dance behind it. It’s remarkable. It’s truly ravishing!”
Mr. La Combe compared the “incredible lightness” of the dance to “butterflies flying across the stage.”
Shen Yun is “a great daydream moment” for the former officer, who said he was impressed by the special effects of the animated digital backdrop interacting with the dancers’ movements.
“This technique of mixing reality and video gives quite an extraordinary feeling,“ he said. ”It’s very enchanting.”
For Mr. La Combe, “it’s courageous to show things as they are in the course of Chinese history, and contemporary history is very hard on China.”
“Here, it’s not camouflaged, it’s said realistically. You can’t deny divinity, inner beauty, and outer beauty all at the same time,” he said.
Traditional Chinese culture is divinely inspired, in stark contrast to the atheist culture imposed by the Chinese communist regime. Shen Yun’s mission is to share with audiences China before communism.
“All our very materialistic attempts at evolution make us forget that we’ve been rooted here for a very long time! While I don’t believe in reincarnation, I do believe in the beauty of heaven and other forms of spirituality. But I think this is where we come together. It’s so beautiful! It’s more than good, it’s profound,” Mr. La Combe said.
Wishing the dancers a good rest, Mrs. La Combe expressed her desire to see the show again.
“I think there’s a lot of beauty, and beauty has a way of carrying you,” she said.
Bruno Sanchez is a weapons engineer. On Monday, Feb. 10, he came to discover Shen Yun in the company of energy therapist Anne-Lise Collinet.
From the very first moments of Shen Yun, Mrs. Collinet felt “an overwhelming amount of vibrations.”
“A very, very strong emotion right from the start. I felt that each set, through the dance, brought us to a particular vibratory plane that can bring us to, what I think, a state of awakening,” she said.
“The aesthetic is perfect,” Mr. Sanchez said. “You can feel that there’s a good atmosphere in the group of artists, they all work in harmony, in cohesion. Technically speaking, I can’t think of anything better.”
Mrs. Collinet said she felt “a very strong unity” between the artists and “an unparalleled discipline.” But, for the therapist, they are, above all, “carriers of a message in everything they deliver; you really feel it.”
“I find that the way they express their depth, the way they express what’s in their heart, the way they express the beauty of what they feel inside, conveys the heartfelt message they want to get across,” she said.
Mr. Sanchez said this message made Shen Yun different from anything else he had seen.
“It’s very clear, it’s very light-hearted, but in reality, it’s extremely profound. So, it’s obviously a message of openness for the new world, the openness of the heart,” he said.
“In this show,” he continued, ”tradition is used to convey ideas that are, in reality, totally innovative in terms of spirituality. We’re not in any religion, we’ve got something new.”
“The show is very well done”, he concluded.
