MONTREAL—Beauties dancing with flowing silk sleeves, the men leaping, Shen Yun Performing Arts took the stage Saturday, April 12, for its first weekend at Montreal’s Place de Arts, satiating locals with a taste of an ancient culture that was once almost lost.
For Ms. Desrosiers, the scenes of Shen Yun today inspired her thoughts.
“I think it’s just like going back to basic things,” she said, adding that social media and technology are growing so rapidly while Shen Yun shows us “what was in the past and how simple life was.”
Many of the segments are love stories or depict acts of kindness and camaraderie.
Ms. Desrosiers said she didn’t know what Shen Yun was about until today and that the outing was part of a gift to her grandmother. “So far, I’m enjoying it,” she said, noting that her favorite segment had a fairy dancer alongside a male lead.
From the beginning, a scene of the Creator in a cloud-bedecked kingdom in Heaven spilled forth as the curtains rose, rich with color and alive with dancers moving in unison. Several segments depicted fairy tales or time-honored motifs, or were set in modern China, depicting religious persecution by the communist regime.
Shen Yun, whose bright billboards have graced almost every continent, has since 2006 made it their mission “to revive the traditional, divinely inspired culture of China and share it with the world.”
Jean-François Pouliot, who does pharmaceutical research by day, said he appreciated the balance of softness and strength he witnessed onstage.
“It’s very athletic, and at the same time it was flowing very nicely,” he said.
“The timing is amazing, and the costume with the long sleeves, it’s pretty amazing,” he added. “It’s something I’ve never seen.”
He said Shen Yun took him on a journey beginning from the Chinese legend of Creation, across the myriad ethnic groups of the Middle Kingdom, to the present, to “give us an idea of the China of today.”
But Mr. Pouliot felt a kinship with Shen Yun, seeing that very first scene of Creation as the curtains first rose.
“The interesting part is, there are things that you could see in other religions as well. You could see that it’s all coming back to the same thing in the end,” he said. “It’s going back to what every human being wants, right?”
And what is that? “Going back to the roots,” he said. “I think it’s very down to Earth and close to nature.”
“There’s a lot more, obviously,” she said, referring to the tumbling techniques that originate from classical Chinese dance and have inspired sports like gymnastics and acrobatics. “That’s very fun and very interesting.”
“They’re succinct, but they tell you exactly what’s going on in China,” she said. “The persecution, all the love still, all the joy—everything is presented very beautifully, and it’s presented in a very clear and understandable way.”
The scene where a young man is tortured for his religious beliefs by the Chinese Communist Party brought tears to her eyes, she said, because he doesn’t have his basic freedoms.
Addressing the dancers in spirit, she said, “You’re survivors because you can bring joy and beauty out of something not necessarily so beautiful. That’s amazing.”
