WASHINGTON—Andrea and Richard Grant attended Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Kennedy Center on Feb. 23 and felt it was a performance of depth.
“I think it emphasizes the importance of developing our divinity, beauty, peace, community, and love. It’s using that to fight darkness or anything that kind of destroys pure nature. That’s what I take from it,” said Mr. Grant, an English professor.
“I actually learned the history of 5,000 years of the Chinese,” said Mrs. Grant. “It was amazing.”
New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company, with a mission to show audiences “China before communism.”
For 5,000 years, Chinese culture and civilization were believed to be divinely inspired, a gift from the heavens, and Mr. Grant said the themes he thought the performance had conveyed were certainly spiritual ones, and of universal relevance.
“I think things that are shown in the show about the importance of the struggle between things that are beautiful and peaceful and things that are ugly and not harmonious,” he said. “It seems like an internal struggle for human beings to deal with that.”
The couple found the history fascinating, and Mr. Grant said it was also interesting to learn about classical Chinese dance, which serves as the foundation for Shen Yun artists’ training. In addition to the classical Chinese dance and story-based vignettes, Shen Yun also showcases several ethnic and folk dances from some of China’s 50-plus ethnic minorities and regions.
“It was very enjoyable, it was interesting,” Mr. Grant said. “It was fantastic.”
Reporting by Weiyong Zhu 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.
