ST. LOUIS, Mo.—Jones Louis had long wanted to see Shen Yun Performing Arts, and this was finally the year.
“Well, I will tell you, I’ve been trying to come to this for 10 years and never had time to do it. And we finally made the time to get the tickets and it’s terrific,” said Mr. Louis, a real estate company owner, who saw
Shen Yun with his family at the Stifel Theatre on March 16.
“It’s beyond our expectations, and [we] can’t wait to try to come next year,” he said.
New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company. Through
music and
dance, Shen Yun aims to revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilization, sharing with audiences the beauty of China before communism.
“Oh, it’s fabulous. You have all your emotions going back and forth and it really is transformative. It’s wonderful,” he said of the experience. “It’s emotional. It’s terrific.”
He recounted love stories and
epic fights, and magical and heavenly beings.
“It does touch your soul. And with the beautiful dancers, the flying across the stage, and of course the opera singer with that beautiful show is really quite lovely,” Mr. Louis said.
The
bel canto solo, which was accompanied by translations of the original Chinese song projected onto the backdrop, lent another dimension to the culture he was seeing.
“Very deep and emotional and frankly quite religious. It was lovely,” he said. “It shows that back in early times in China there was religion, and it was very nice.”
Mr. Louis said that
Shen Yun conveyed “a wonderful connection,” and a message “that there’s hope.”
“Of life and love with family. It’s just a beautiful story,” he said.
Reporting by Sherry Dong and Catherine Yang.
