Mrs. McKinney was a dancer as well as a singer and performer and was uplifted seeing Shen Yun, especially knowing how much heart and work must have gone into what they saw on stage.
“It makes me feel happy and joyful because I’m an artist as well, so I understand all of the things that go into a production like this. It brings back a lot of memories for me,” she said.
“The entire show was very impressive, very well done. Very well done,” she said. “It was magnificent.”
Audience members often share that the performance was much more than music and dance, and not something that can be fully explained in a review, glowing as it might be. The McKinneys felt the same.
“How can you describe something as complex and as beautiful as that show was? I don’t have any words that would adequately describe what I saw today,” said Mr. McKinney. “It was a fascinating opportunity to see a culture that I had not been able to see ever before.”
“Right now I can’t think of a better group of people to represent a really wonderful group of people or human beings in their culture and everything that they talk about,” he said.
Mrs. McKinney said she had not known about the history of China, so was fascinated to learn about the 5,000-year history before communism, contrasted with the oppression brought by the Chinese communist regime in the modern period.
The performance inspired her to think about the commonalities of every culture, she said, as well as the periods of darkness and division, and how a society could move past that.
“I think it’s imperative that people open up their eyes and see the truth of who we are, why we’re here, and what our purpose is,” she said.
She felt Shen Yun could remind people of “the story of why we’re created, what we’re here for. We’re here to do good, to do wonderful things, uplifting things, and to help people grow, to help people, to love people, so that we can all enjoy a good good life.”
“I hope they continue it because it’s so important for the population to see it and to appreciate it,” she said.
