BOSTON—Eleana Santorineou and her son saw Shen Yun Performing Arts last year and fell in love with its music and dance. From then on, they made it their mission to follow Shen Yun year after year.
When they heard that the Shen Yun Symphony Orchestra would be performing in Boston, they immediately bought tickets. This time, Eleana also brought her husband, Philip Dawiki, who missed the performance last year.
“We didn’t want to leave today. I wanted to stay, want to listen more,” Santorineou, former ballet dancer of José Mateo Ballet Theatre, said at the Boston Symphony Hall on Oct. 25.
“It was wonderful; it was fantastic. We’re actually going to be coming back … to see the dance performance as well,” said Philip Dawicki, a vice president in finance.
“Really nice music, really relaxed and calm music,” their son, Alexandros Dawicki, said.
The family shared that it wasn’t just the blend of East and West that made the orchestra stand apart. There was something about the music that was out of this world.
“It’s like a layer that is above and beyond this mundane world,” said Santorineou. “It transports you to a happy place. It just makes your soul feel happy.”
“It was airy and brought you up, and was very exciting,” Dawicki added. It was very dynamic and a little bit different.”
“There were so many strings that were playing, and they had like layers of music that would hit you in waves,” he said. “We were sitting actually in the very back in the very upper balcony in the last row, and yet we felt all of that music coming towards us. And so it was—really, it was wonderful.”
Dawicki said that Shen Yun’s music has positive energy.
“It was like air coming at you, with sound. Sort of uplifting—just makes you feel good to be alive,”
The audience gave the conductors and musicians a standing ovation after the final concert of the Shen Yun Symphony Orchestra’s 2019 tour.