INDIANAPOLIS—Richie Campbell, an operations manager, watched Shen Yun Performing Arts’ matinee performance at the Clowes Memorial Hall, Butler Arts Center, on March 23.
Based in New York, Shen Yun was founded in 2006 and is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance and music company. Since its inception, Shen Yun has expanded from one to eight equally sized companies that tour around the world simultaneously, reviving traditional Chinese culture and showcasing the beauty of “China before communism.”
Shen Yun’s couture costumes and the dancers’ gracefulness stood out to Mr. Campbell.“The clothes are very beautiful,” he said. “I love the way they dress, the flowing materials. Also, their grace, how quickly they move, but everything seems so light. You don’t even hear their footsteps. It’s very impressive.”
In addition to dance vignettes, Shen Yun’s program also includes story-based dances, some of which are set in modern-day China and depict the perseverance of followers of faith in the face of the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution. Mr. Campbell described seeing the persecution depicted on stage as “very eye-opening.”
“[I’m] kind of upset that that’s the way China used to be and that it’s not that way anymore,” Mr. Campbell said, referring to how different pre-communist China was to modern-day China. “[It’s] very sad ... to know that a lot of the Chinese that are over here now, probably are here because of the way their country is now. And so looking at the way their country used to be and their history, and their long history of thousands of years, really is sad that it’s not that way anymore.”
“It’s very much like Western religion,” Mr. Campbell said. “It was very cool to see that a lot of the world, no matter where you’re from, kind of has the same views ... at the very heart of it in the beginning.”
