NANTES, France—Since Feb. 18, the western capital of France has welcomed the very best in classical Chinese dance and music. Shen Yun Performing Arts brings 5,000 years of Chinese history and traditional culture to life at the Cité des Congrès in Nantes.
“It’s a wonderful show,” says Vincent Josnin, a former insurance inspector. ”It makes us dream, it takes us back to childhood, and the acting is exceptional. The dancers are marvelous!”
Shen Yun’s orchestra was also a wonderful discovery for Mr. Josnin, who was particularly moved by “the extraordinary percussion, with a very friendly harpist.”
Mr. Josnin praised Shen Yun’s mission to revive China’s rich 5,000-year traditional culture, which in less than 100 years was almost destroyed by the Chinese Communist Party.
“It’s very important,” Mr. Josnin said. He said the modern age is a civilization that destroys the past, to everyone’s detriment. He quoted the old saying, “‘if you don’t know your past, you have no future.’ Well, I believe that China’s future lies in these traditions.”
“It‘ll come back,” he predicted. ”It has to! That’s pretty much the final message when I say, ’The Savior is coming back,'“ he added, referencing the program’s finale. ”I think it will come through these traditions. It’s true for you, and it’s true for us too!”
“It’s a bond that is indispensable, that is natural,” Mr. Josnin stressed, quoting “Gustave Thibon, a French philosopher, who said: ‘The natural without the supernatural is not natural.’ That’s a very interesting idiom!”
“There are a lot of similarities in the message,” he added, “but whether you’re Buddhist, Catholic, or any other religion, I think in all conscience that it carries us toward the good, and the good is the ultimate goal.”
For Mr. Josnin, Shen Yun “can only make us loveable! I think it builds bridges between men and women who are here and on Earth. And I think that’s very important!”
“Jean Rousset once said at a conference, ‘Good will return through beauty.’ So, it will be through music, it will be through the arts, it will be through dance and it will be through the whole Chinese heritage, most certainly, because it is marvelous, and it touches us to the very depths of our hearts,” he said.
