SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Shen Yun ‘Incredibly Magnificent’ and ‘Very Positive,’ Says New York Patron

Apr 15, 2023

NEW YORK—Abigail and her father Stephen Schedra saw Shen Yun Performing Arts for the first time at Lincoln Center on April 15, and were uplifted by the positive experience.

“I loved it,” said Ms. Schedra, a chief operating officer, after seeing the matinee performance. “Very positive message from the whole show.”

“I was particularly moved by the different pieces of the cultural history that you shared. And the different instruments, the orchestra particularly, how it [included] traditional Chinese instruments.”

Mr. Schedra, an engineer, added, “I was very inspired. Yes, and I thought it was particularly interesting, the mix of the traditional and the ethnic and the folk dancing altogether. So it gave us a very wide spectrum of cultural Chinese dance. And it was great. It was very inspiring.”

New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company, with a mission to revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilization. Far from homogenous, China is actually home to some 50-plus ethnic minority groups, each with their own cultural legacies, so Shen Yun’s programs typically include a number of ethnic and folk dances.

Mr. Schedra pointed out the Mongolian dance that featured chopsticks used in a percussive fashion as one example of what he found so impressive.

“The dance, all the dance, is incredibly inspirational because the physical presentation of the dance is so effortless, but yet so impossible. Like at certain times the performers look like they’re floating in the air and you’re like, how’s that possible? They have no cables, no wires. That’s just their talent and their skill and their dedication to their art. So it’s incredibly magnificent and as well as the instrumentalists and the soloists. Very, very high-level performance.”

The father and daughter also commented on the universal aspect of Shen Yun’s cultural revival.

“I think, traditional Chinese culture, from way back, matches with traditional Western culture and Middle Eastern culture, from way back. The fact that there was a Creator who put us here, and we have certain innate things that we know are right, and then there are certain other things that we think we know better. And when we get off from what we know is right instinctively in our spirit, the results are not good. And we can see that in our world today. So the message here is particularly relevant in today’s age and becomes more relevant to the deeper we go into madness,” Mr. Schedra shared.

Ms. Schedra added, “I feel that it’s a spiritual element ... I resonate with it because it’s about the Creator ... traditional Chinese, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, we all have one Creator, so I feel like it does all put us together as if there’s a Creator.”

Reporting by Weiyong Zhu.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.