Shen Yun Performing Arts completed its run in Vancouver, Canada, last week, with ticket sales so strong, organizers added one more show at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on March 25.
Audience member Michelle Herrewynen, who has a BA in music from the University of British Columbia, is the general manager of the Vancouver Cantata Singers.
“The music is beautiful, absolutely stunning, yes. Powerful and so variable with all the scenes and the different feelings evoked by all the different scenes. It’s very dynamic,” said Ms. Herrewynen. “The drumming, you know the percussion in the Chinese style is very powerful and you feel that.”
“When the ladies are dancing gracefully, and the music emulates that, it’s very seamless.”
In addition to a live orchestra, Shen Yun has operatic soloists who sing bel canto style opera with Chinese lyrics.
“Wonderful, I loved the singing, she has a lovely voice, a very high voice,” said Kelly Meade, owner of Meade and Co. CPAs.
“It’s wonderful, and I even had a few tears.”
Shen Yun also has hundreds of custom-made costumes that show the diversity of China, both across time and space.
“The costumes are phenomenal, the dancers are outstanding, and the culture is quite evident in the dance performance and in the music as well,” said Bianca Fusco Zanatta, principal of M. Zanatta Homes & Design.
“You can do an entire collection on the colorful costumes here. I’m quite a colorful, classical designer myself, and I could come away with some very fascinating ideas for a next project.”
New York-based Shen Yun seeks to show China’s ancient culture in a way that anyone, no matter where they’re from, can understand. Ronnie Pitcher, the owner of a travel agency that specializes in cruises, said he liked the depth and spirituality of the performance.
“There is a divine person and, you know, we’re all going to have to answer to that person at some stage. So from that experience, it’s really been great,” said Mr. Pitcher, owner and manager of Expedia CruiseShipCenters. “Bringing the world together as one, and back to one divine person, so I think that’s fantastic.”
“To see that a Chinese culture has a grounding if you will in a connection to the divine, to spirituality. Whether you call it religious or spiritual or a meditative practice or the morality of the human character. Striving for a more moral human being in this world,” said Richard Simon, a marketing professor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. “It transcends culture of course, it transcends ethnicity, it transcends religion, it’s within each of us. So that’s the beauty, that’s beautiful, and the beauty came through in the performance tonight.”
“I think it was just really well done, a real celebration of life and celebration of creator and how we’re all part of this human family. Us being on the earth and how we live in harmony or not. And I do believe in the wisdom of the ancient cultures that will come through, will come through people, it will come through the land, it will come through our young,” said Naomi Zettl, owner of Ancient Art of Stone.
