SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Shen Yun Off-the-Charts Incredible, Says CTO

Feb 01, 2025

SAN ANTONIO—As a Christian, Steve Saint-Vincent knows about the history of religious persecution and what people have endured for their faith. Seeing Shen Yun Performing Arts’ revival of traditional Chinese culture, he said there were many parallels to the Hebrew tradition, and he saw hopeful commonality.

“The ancient traditions of China, they have their threads that go back into the very similar common foundations of the divine,” said Mr. Saint-Vincent, a chief technology officer in the engineering field, who saw a performance at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts on Feb. 1.

New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company, and its mission is to revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilization—China before communism.

For five millennia, Chinese civilization was a spiritual one, drawing from Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism morals and principles that were common throughout society. The Chinese believed their culture was divinely inspired, a gift from the heavens.

The performance depicted belief in a divine Creator, which Mr. Saint-Vincent said was common across cultures.

“The talent is amazing, and the ancient Chinese culture is very fascinating,” he said.

The stories Shen Yun told through classical Chinese dance spanned five millennia, even touching on the present day. Mr. Saint-Vincent referenced one of the stories that touched on the Chinese communist regime’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners,. Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, teaches the three principles of truth, compassion, and tolerance and has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

“We certainly know, like the Falun Gong practitioners, they’re suffering tremendously for their faith,” said Mr. Saint Vincent. He said the practitioners’ steadfast faith reminded him of what Christians had been able to endure in placing hope, faith, greater glory, and trust in the Creator and Jesus Christ.

“That in spite of the persecution and turmoil that when I die, I know that I will be in the presence of my Creator and my Savior. And that’s what my hope is, that the Chinese people, I mean, certainly haven’t been embracing that and will embrace that more,” he said.

Mr. Saint-Vincent said the performance was “off the chart.”

“It [is] incredibly, incredibly talented and it is definitely a world-class, definitely world-class talent and performance,” he said.

Reporting by Sherry Dong 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.