SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

‘Very Elaborate, Very Creative’: Oil Painter Admires Shen Yun’s Art

Apr 05, 2025

4/5/2025Updated: 4/6/2025

DENVER—Oil painter John Lintott attended Shen Yun Performing Arts in a party of 11 to celebrate his mother’s 80th birthday, and gathered much inspiration from the art.

“So, myself, and my three older brothers, and our families all came to watch the show, and it was wonderful,” said Mr. Lincott after seeing the performance at The Buell Theatre on April 5.

New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s top classical Chinese dance company. Through music and dance, Shen Yun’s mission is to show audiences the beauty of China before communism.

“It’s wonderful. It’s awesome. We love the costumes. We love the choreography. It was really wonderful,” he said. “Very elaborate, very creative. We loved how the parts of the outfits would be part of the choreography and the colors and everything.”

Mr. Lincott added that the performance was also very educational for the family, introducing them to a side of China rarely shown.

“I think that it’s a wonderfully rich culture that has so many different areas in China, because it’s so big, and it was really neat to see just a really small slice of the people and their backgrounds, and just to see the art,” he said.

In addition to classical Chinese dance, Shen Yun includes in its program ethnic and folk dance vignettes showcasing a few of the 50-some ethnic minorities and regions across China.

“For me, it’s wonderful to just sit and watch that. It’s a visual, wonderful treat,” Mr. Lincott said.

His wife, Emily, a school teacher, said the art also conveyed universal values like “hope and kindness, and discipline.”

“It shows the importance of faith and tradition to the people who it means a lot to,” she said.

Mr. Lincott added that it was also about “the ability to have the freedom to express those faiths and all of the artistic expression and culture that they had. The ability to have that freedom to express that is really important.” And knowing that Shen Yun cannot perform in China today, where the communist regime has sought to destroy traditional culture, Mr. Lincott felt that the message of freedom was important.

Reporting by Lily Yu and Catherine Yang.

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