COSTA MESA, Calif.—Jim Righeimer, a real estate developer and former mayor of Costa Mesa, attended Shen Yun Performing Arts’ opening night at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts on April 15 with his wife, Lene, a homemaker.
Though they had heard about Shen Yun for years, this was their first time experiencing it—and it turned out to be everything they had hoped for.
“Phenomenal. … It’s like amazing. First of all, they’re like athletes—these dancers up there. The limberness, the way they move so smoothly and so fast as they do all the different dances—it’s interesting just to see all the different styles of dance throughout China,” Mr. Righeimer said.
“When the people take off and fly, that’s amazing. Who thought of that? To make something like that work—you aren’t ready for it. They just disappear, and then [in] the same exact clothes, fly away.”
However, after the communist takeover and the spread of atheism, all this traditional culture was systematically destroyed. Shen Yun’s goal is to bring back the beauty and goodness of pre-communist China.
Chinese culture “is 5,000 years old and it’s only been gone for 70, 80 years. You need to bring it back. … Who knows what it’ll take to bring it back, but we have hope,” he commented.
“I think the value of the show is especially for people that don’t know about China ... [who] haven’t been to China and realize that China was a lot different before [communism].”
Mrs. Reigheimer, too, loved the performance.
To sum up the evening, Mr. Reigheimer said Shen Yun is “a great show.”
Reporting by Michael Ren and Jennifer Tseng.
The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
