SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Shen Yun Filled With ‘Incredible Talent,’ Say DC Theatergoers

Feb 23, 2025

WASHINGTON—Eileen Early and John Wall were impressed by the amount of talent they saw in Shen Yun Performing Arts.

“It’s probably one of the best performers in the world. It’s really incredible to see and to learn about the history of the tradition and culture of China in general,” said Ms. Early, a defense analyst after seeing the performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington on Feb. 23.

“To perform with flips and all that agility, that’s not something that’s easily done. I mean, that’s extremely difficult. The music and the performers, they’re amazing,” said Mr. Wall, a project manager.

New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company, aiming to, through music and dance, revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilization.

Shen Yun’s dancers are trained at Shen Yun’s affiliate schools in New York, where dancers receive complete training in classical Chinese dance as a foundation, which includes mastery of difficult tumbling techniques as the ones that impressed Mr. Wall. The aerial flips, leaps, and spins that originated in this art form are today found in sports like gymnastics and acrobatics.

Classical Chinese dance is also a famously expressive art form, well suited to storytelling, and used in Shen Yun to present several story-based dance vignettes spanning China’s five millennia.

“What I like about it is there’s a narrator telling you the whole entire story. It’s a whole performance as well. It’s theater, it’s dancing, it’s history. So a mix of everything I like,” Ms. Early said.

“I think it takes just incredible talent to do,” Mr. Wall added. “I mean, there’s actually several components to the show. There’s the music, there’s the video, there’s the dress, the dancing. I mean, everything is timed perfectly. It switches from live to video—very smoothly. And to get that down to perfect science is very impressive.”

Ms. Early and Mr. Wall also expressed support for Shen Yun’s mission to share with audiences “China before communism.”

“There’s no other greater mission, I think, to end communism. It’s touching to all of us,” said Ms. Early.

“Agreed,” Mr. Wall added, wishing the artists the “freedom of the artwork and to present themselves.”

Reporting by Frank Liang 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.