A former principal dancer at the Royal Ballet, Wayne Sleep was in the audience at London’s Eventim Apollo. He said Shen Yun’s performance brought joy to people.
“It was unique, and it’s something I didn’t expect at all … It’s simple some of it, but joyous. It brings you joy,” Mr. Sleep said.
He praised Shen Yun’s technicolour: “It was like watching a movie. It’s like I’ve seen colour for the first time, because it’s so different than our colour. It’s stunningly simple with the pinks and the yellows and it’s just one colour and the silks.”
Mr. Sleep became a senior principal dancer at the Royal Ballet Company in 1966 and was appointed Order of the British Empire in 1998. He is a patron of the British Ballet Organisation and vice-president of the Royal Academy of Dance.
As a professional dancer and choreographer himself, Mr. Sleep found the flow of Shen Yun’s dances very smooth and faultless: “When you finish a line, it almost ripples into the next movement, so it’s never still. And to be able to do that with 20, 30 people on stage, that they all breathe into the next step.”
Shen Yun’s mission is to revive traditional Chinese culture and share it with the world.
Mr. Sleep said he loved the traditional Chinese stories in Shen Yun, “I love the innocence of it like a child because I would imagine that China’s been sort of maintained and a lot of people didn’t get outside, so it’s protected the innocence.”
He said the dynamic backdrop was a very clever idea: “I’ve never seen that before. So it was wonderful and it was so accurate, I mean when he goes to throw a bucket you see the water spray in the, you know, in the scenery.”
Mr. Sleep came to watch Shen Yun because his friend Liz Brewer recommended the show to him.
Ms. Brewer is a world-renowned events organiser and expert on social behaviour and etiquette.
She said she loved Shen Yun for its energy, colour and “the deep message.”
“It’s an education for a lot of us here because we’re still totally unaware of the kind of life that is going on,” said Ms. Brewer.
She said she could feel the energy that came over to the audience: “What I specifically notice is, the audience is spellbound. You can hear a pin drop, they’re concentrating while they’re watching this.”
Ms. Brewer said this was her second time watching Shen Yun, “The first time I saw it, it was unexpected and the flow and the way it’s done and when you understand the background and how everything has been prepared and put together, then you can appreciate it a lot more.”
NTD News London, UK
