CALGARY, Canada—Susan Mensinger, artistic director of Young Canadians School of Performing Arts, put on a performance at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium on March 9. Two days later, she was back—this time as a first time theatergoer seeing Shen Yun Performing Arts.
The only critique, Ms. Mensinger said, was “they almost closed the curtains too soon,” and the audience wanted more time to stand up and applaud their artists and show appreciation for their hard work.
“I thought the show was fabulous. Like, fabulous. I absolutely appreciate the amount of rehearsal and the amount of dedication to do what they’re doing,” said Ms. Mensinger, who has spent her whole career dancing and teaching dance, with 40 years under the Artistique Dance Academy in Calgary.
“And the beauty of it, of course, for me being a dance teacher, [is] how together they were,” she said. “That doesn’t just come. It takes from hours and hours and hours of rehearsal.”
“There wasn’t one hair that fell out. There wasn’t one costume piece that fell off. You know, the blocking was immaculate. They weren’t looking to see, you know, where they were supposed to be on the stage. They just knew where they were supposed to be.”Ms. Mensinger noted the incorporation of historical dress as difficult props used in the dances: “Manchurian Ethnic Dance” where the ladies of the Manchurian court wore “flower pot shoes,” high shoes with a block in the center of the shoe, and “The Ladies’ Dance: Water in the Balance,” where the female dancers balanced porcelain jars on their heads in the piece.
“How difficult that is,” she said. “And then I was just explaining to my mom the one number and the blocks on their feet. And how hard that would be to balance on a block on your foot.”
“The rating of the show—it’s fabulous,” Ms. Mensinger said.
Learning About China’s 5,000-Year-Old History Through Shen Yun Was ‘Incredible’: Business Coach
Greg Lingelbach, executive business coach, was pleasantly surprised by Shen Yun’s portrayal of China’s 5,000 year old culture saying that its history is “something incredible.”“The beauty, the culture, the art—it’s a beautiful culture,” Mr. Lingelbach said after watching Shen Yun at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium on March 11.
“And to see them around the world with eight troupes is pretty amazing.”
Shen Yun’s mission is to revive China’s 5,000-year-old culture, using the medium of music and dance to showcase the best of China’s traditional values and history, myths and legends. However, the ancient culture of China was almost lost under communism, where traditional culture was seen as a threat to communist rule.
Through campaigns such as the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party systematically uprooted traditional beliefs and destroyed ancient treasures, bringing 5,000 years of civilization to the brink of extinction.
Mr. Lingelbach resonated with Shen Yun’s mission.
“I mean they want to educate the rest of the world, and that’s why the troupes I think they are going around the world and they’re having impact,” he said.
“Even though we’re so vast in terms of our culture, we all share the same belief that there is a higher being who is there for us, and we need Him,” Mrs. Lingelbach said.
“The Creator coming down to the earth and saving us, I mean we’re Christians so it has a lot of meaning for us, it’s part of our belief,” Mrs. Lingelbach said.
“And it’s believing that the Creator created everything, and everything is beautiful because of it, and this is just a piece of that—when you look back that many thousands of years and what it brought to our earth,” Mr. Lingelbach said.
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