Tony Recommends: Shen Yun Performing Arts: Girls are beautiful and pure, boys are handsome and upright! – Spectacular and Powerful Performance reviving the 5000 years of Chinese Divine Culture

Surely I believe all of us have become used to entering into the new year of 2014, right? For me, the first surprise I got this year was watching the remarkable performance by the world famous Shen Yun Performing Arts 2014 world tour!

January 4 to 12, Shen Yun Performing Arts International Company came to the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco to perform a total of nine shows, which were absolutely extraordinary, bringing audiences very enlightened feelings. In my opinion, in fact, I would call it SPECTACULAR and POWERFUL. As you can see in many media reports, Shen Yun was very well-received in San Francisco this year. According to its organizer, the tickets for Shen Yun show on Saturday afternoon (Jan 11^th) were all sold out, so that the theater had to start selling the side seats where you cannot see the whole stage. To their surprise, the side seats were also soon sold out, and the theater finally had to open the standing tickets. You really could hardly get a ticket.

It is not easy to achieve this level for a Chinese performance company. As a picky musician, I have watched the show twice this time. I was very impressed about the show. I enjoyed many classic stories based on China’s divine culture in the form of Chinese Classical Dance, such as Ne Zha Churns the Sea, The Monkey King, Sweeping out the Tyrant, etc. Also you could see many folk dances of China too, such as dance of Yao ethnic group, Manchurian Grace as well as Mongolian Chopsticks, etc. I am from China, and I have seen many Chinese performances before. However, the dance presentation of Shen Yun has a unique and also the biggest difference from any other Chinese performances, which is that the spiritual realm of the performance can possibly only be found in a heavenly paradise higher than our ordinary world. The performance forms Shen Yun takes are very carefully refined. There are a variety of costumes, rich and varied dance movements, as well as beautiful live music all taking place together. Although they, as different elements, look complicated, they actually work harmoniously together, no messy and they are amazingly neat!

Many young boys and girls in today’s entertainment world are pursuing slovenly image, fancying dark colors, cold eye expressions, regarding these being fashionable. However, in Shen Yun, we see a different group of young artists. Girls are beautiful and pure, boys are handsome and upright, “righteous” is a good word to describe them. I think this is the true beauty and vigor that young people should have and pursue. And they also indeed show up themselves just like the name Shen Yun’s meaning – “the beauty of divine beings dancing” (as explained on Shen Yun’s website). They really have the divine power I suppose, and of course, there is no lack of friendly, warm attitude and humor too! The whole show is just majestic without ignoring the details.

If you enter into Shen Yun’s atmosphere in which you will see the high tech 3D backdrops, Chinese classical dance performances, with live symphony orchestra combining both Chinese and Western traditional musical instruments, you could notice that these three together build up a 3-dimensional performing art form. It is not only the art form being 3-dimensional, but also the inner meaning of Shen Yun’s performance content is 3-dimensional too, through the scene changes showing on the backdrop. Shen Yun connects heaven, earth and people, travelling through time and space. The performance is not only 3-dimensional in its art form, but also in its spiritual connotations. It is as if we could see some kind of space-time structure through Shen Yun. We can see what is happening in heaven, what is happening on earth. The three times - ancient times, modern times and the future are rendered into one. It could actually make us guess that maybe this is the true interpretation of the true image or the truth of the time and space.

I think this show can be said to be unique in this world. I believe people who have seen it resonate to what I have been talking about too. In addition, this show also leads us to think about our future, the meaning of life too. These are all precious harvests, thanks to the great time that Shen Yun Performing Arts has brought us.

These are just some of my understandings of Shen Yun. I believe there are definitely deeper meanings to be discovered and understood from Shen Yun. Anyway, if you still have not seen it before, please be sure not to miss it this year. And for those who have seen it before, Shen Yun presents a whole new show each year, so if you have seen it once, it doesn’t mean that you have seen it all!

They are currently still touring around the world, Have a check when Shen Yun is coming to your city right now! I do recommend it!

Shen Yun website : http://www.shenyun.com/