Raleigh Audience Hope That Shen Yun Will Bring Culture to China Again

Feng Xue
By Feng Xue
January 7, 2019USA
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Mitt Richards has some understanding of Chinese culture. As a former emergency medicine physician, he would have patients and now still has students whose parents only speak Chinese, so he is fluent in the language. It brought him to tears to see the traditional Chinese culture of 5,000 years brought to life on stage.

The presentation, coupled with the music, the timing was perfect, the music…it stimulated the hearing,” said Mitt Richards, a retired emergency medicine physician. “The costumes, the colors brought out the visual, and then the athleticism, the movements that the grace of the performers brought it all together for a phenomenal, phenomenal show. It was very heartwarming for me.”

Richards saw Shen Yun Performing Arts for the second time at the Raleigh Memorial Auditorium at Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts on Jan. 6, and described the intensity of the experience afterward.

“And on some of the stories that are told through dance, I actually, I teared up. I cried, [‘ku le’ in Chinese], I cried. The intensity of the emotions and the belief that they had when they would dance, and this dealt with their own views on relationships,” said Richards. “And love and expression of spirituality. All those things came out for me.”

“This is a very thought-provoking and emotion-provoking performance that brings all of this, brings humanity out,” Richards added.

I was so taken by what we saw today,” said Judy Ziff, a singer. “It was absolutely gorgeous. The costuming, the presentation, the precision, was just wonderful.”

“It was a….and the way [Shen Yun] presented the history, was just absolutely perfection,” said Joanne Steiner, a retired business executive. “We really enjoyed it.”

“I think that’s sad when a country does destroy its history,” Ziff said. “And its art and all of the things that really make us human.”

“When sometimes…power takes over value. When that happens, it usually isn’t very good, but in time, it can change. The human spirit is very dominant and will rise up and make good things happen,” Steiner added.

According to its website, the company is in the midst of its 2019 world tour, which involves six groups traveling to over 100 cities across countries. The one country they won’t be performing in though is China, which is still controlled by the Communist Party.

“And learning that people in China can’t actually see a show like this was kind of shocking to me,” said Lisa Saenz, a revenue manager at Duke Health Care System. “And it’s so beautiful, I wish they could.”

NTD News, Raleigh, North Carolina

 

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