Anne Serdy at Shen Yun Performing Arts at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido, Calif., on Oct, 24, 2021. NTD Television
ESCONDIDO, Calif.—“Magnificent as always,” said Anne Serdy after watching Shen Yun Performing Arts for what she estimated to be the seventh time. Serdy is a veterinarian who works at the local High Valley Veterinary Hospital.
“Everything is to perfection,” she said. “The magnificent artistry and the costumes and the sparkle and the laughter and the orchestra.”
New York-based Shen Yun, a company whose aim is the revival of traditional Chinese culture in its purest form, was playing at the California Center for the Arts in Escondido on Oct. 24.
Classical Chinese dance, through storytelling, bequeaths the teachings, legends, and history of China’s diverse dynasties, arts, and spiritual schools from a period of 5,000 years. Shen Yun also celebrates China’s many colorful regional dances that have very distinctive features.
Serdy said she enjoyed Shen Yun’s use of stage technology, with its unique digital animations that have been patented by the company.
It’s an “amazing combination of technology,” she said, “with the screen behind and then the dancers jumping off the back of the screen and then back on to the stage. The merging [is] always flawless,” she said.
One of the pieces in Shen Yun is rooted in the belief in a divine power that descends to earth to help mankind.
“I think that definitely occurs for the people who believe in [the divine], and I feel that everybody is touched by [the divine] even if they don’t believe,” Serdy said.
For Serdy, Shen Yun has been “life-changing and heartfelt.”
I come every year because it’s the one day that really fills you for the rest of the year.
— Anne Serdy
“I come every year because it’s the one day that really fills you for the rest of the year,” she said of her experience.
“You can always think back on this day and think back on the things you’ve seen, and you can see how hard the people on the stage work, and even the musicians and the orchestra. It’s magnificent that they share their talent with you,” she added.
Lauren Peppard and Paul Shurov at Shen Yun Performing Arts at the California Center for the Arts in Escondido, Calif., on Oct. 24, 2021. Sophia Fang/The Epoch Times
Lauren Peppard and Paul Shurov also saw Shen Yun at the California Center for the Arts, but it was their first time.
“It was incredible. Everything was perfect,” Peppard said, a software engineer. “The dancers were beautiful; the costumes were amazing; the acrobatics were breathtaking. I loved all the flips they did and the really high kicks.”
“The show seemed very much larger than life with all the colors and the choreography; everything happening simultaneously, it was very unique. There was a lot of detail in each one of the moves,” finance manager Shurov said.
Roger French, a musician who was also in the audience, was impressed by the synchronicity of the performance.
“The music timing in with the dancing is absolutely remarkable. Every bit of expression that is within the dancers coincides with what the orchestra is doing. And then, what is so unique about the orchestra is the combination of Eastern and Western instruments, and for me, it’s very much a joy to see how well … the composer has integrated Eastern and Western music,” he said.
Reporting by Sophia Fang and NTD Television.
The Epoch Times considers Shen Yun Performing Arts the significant cultural event of our time. We have proudly covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
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