SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Shen Yun Transport Audiences to ‘Other Realms,’ Says Australian Lawmaker

Feb 26, 2025

SYDNEY—An Australian lawmaker said from Sydney’s Capitol Theatre that Shen Yun Performing Arts transports audiences to “other realms and ancient landscapes.”

“The show is beautiful. It’s so colorful and vibrant,” said the Hon. Jacqui Munro of the opening night performance on Feb. 26 in Sydney as Shen Yun continues its 2025 all-new tour in Australia. Ms. Munro is the shadow assistant minister for the Arts in the New South Wales state Parliament.

“The dancers are just incredible—they’re so fluid and beautiful, and the music is excellent as well,” she added. “The musicians are very talented.”

Shen Yun, hailing from New York, is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company that delivers what it calls an experience of “China before communism.”

Ms. Munro said China’s traditional culture came to life in the theater.

“It’s incredibly magical, actually,” she said, referring to Shen Yun’s patented digital background that seamlessly extends the stage into other realms and ancient landscapes.

“Obviously, the technology that goes in behind it is really quite modern, I think,” she added. “And it really allows us to be transported into a new world and really explore that new world.”

Shen Yun was founded in New York in 2006 by elite artists and performers who sought to revive China’s 5,000-year-long civilization—much of which had been destroyed since the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949.

Ms. Munro remarked on the “sense of duty” Shen Yun’s performers appear to shoulder as they go about sharing China’s traditional culture with the world.

China’s culture is steeped in ancient spirituality, a belief in Buddhas and divine beings. However, the Chinese Communist Party is an atheistic regime and suppresses people of faith. Shen Yun has said that many of its performers practice Falun Dafa, a spiritual discipline that faces harsh persecution in mainland China.

Shen Yun gives audiences an experience of China’s spiritual history and the modern-day challenges, often brutal and fatal, faced by Falun Dafa practitioners.

“I guess all the performers draw on that spirituality to give them strength, not only to perform but to continue to learn and to continue to practice that craft over time, whether they’re in Australia or in America or around the world,” Ms. Munro said.

“They have this sense of duty, I suppose, to share this culture with the world.”

With reporting by NTD and Caden Pearson.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.