Italian, German, and American Audiences Cherish Shen Yun: “Truly Heavenly Beings Who Danced”

“So Colorful and Full of Energy”

Lucrezia Drei, a renowned soprano, and Massimo Fiocchi Malaspina, a conductor, chorus master, composer, and pianist, saw Shen Yun performance in Milan, Italy, on June 4.

“It’s amazing. It’s been a very long time that I was waiting to come here to watch it. It’s really astonishing. Totally different from what we’re used to seeing, like our dance, our ballet. And it’s so colorful and full of energy. I’m really enjoying it,” said Ms. Drei.

“Very spiritual message. A message to go beyond, to listen to the sensation, to the feeling, to breathe, and calm down. Meditation is something very fascinating to me,” she said.

Mr. Malaspina also shared his experience.

“I think Shen Yun is perfect skill-wise, absolutely best of all, truly. Perfect skills, as I’ve seen, so incredible, really outstanding. It is so great to be able to see a dance performance with live orchestra accompaniment. Also saw Chinese traditional instruments and Western traditional instruments playing together, so interesting, so exciting,” he said.

“I want to say that the dance performance on stage and the orchestra’s performance we heard match perfectly. It was more toward Chinese traditional music. Really, Shen Yun is truly perfect. The music and the performance on stage combined perfectly.

“Shen Yun delivers a message that is full of hope. At the end of the performance, it makes you feel full of hope,” he said.

“An Incredibly Heart-opening Effect”

Katrin Seibold, a former reporter at ZDF, a German television broadcasting company, saw Shen Yun in Frankfurt, Germany, on May 31.

Ms. Seibold said, “I never expected what impressive stagecraft has emerged from China’s comprehensive and profound culture.” After her career at ZDF, she worked, among other jobs, as an associate teacher of the Universal Healing Tao by Mantak Chia, and deals with yoga and body work as an inner path (Dao).

“It is really phenomenal how this spread in ancient China at such a depth, stretching back thousands of years and actually to the beginning of mankind,” said Ms. Seibold, who was also impressed by the precision of the artists and the aesthetics of the staging.

“Something here is dedicated to the good, the true, and the beautiful. Then you start to rethink and look at everything that is performed on our stages… Here it was shown how much that is the original meaning of culture, although that is actually obvious.

“This performance had an incredibly heart-opening effect on me. It was almost as if the heart would burst open during the performance, simply by the interplay of colors and movement, philosophical harmonies,” she said.

Speaking of the persecution portrayed in the performance, she said, “The public needs to know about all the suffering, because what the state is doing here with its citizens is catastrophic. We can’t just accept that… The brutal actions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) against this spiritual practice must be drawn attention to.”

“The Revealing of Mercy” is the final piece of the performance, which describes the struggle between good and evil. Finally, compassion opens a path to renewal and hope. Ms. Seibold finds it “infinitely enchanting to see these spiritual aspects brought to the stage in dance and musical elements.”

She saw analogies between access to transcendence on the one hand, and the meridians and functional circuits in traditional Chinese medicine on the other. “A body without blood circulation does not function. It’s in everything, it’s essential, so to speak, it not only gives the whole thing meaning, it creates it in the first place,” she said.

“We see where we come from. We see that we keep going into new incarnations and that we don’t have to be afraid of death.

“I really have to thank the artists, for all of us, for the human family, for showing it like this,” Ms. Seibold said.

“Truly Heavenly Beings Who Danced”

Chiara Lo Presti, an entrepreneur and singer, saw Shen Yun in Udine, Italy, on May 31.

“I congratulate them because they were impeccable, truly heavenly beings who danced. [They achieved] an almost non-human perfection. I believe they inspired us to be lightweight,” Ms. Lo Presti said.

She also shared that she saw that the experience of Shen Yun gave the audience a sense of being united.

“A lot of energy… It’s a beautiful sensation of cohesion among the people, not only the artists on stage. But also this ability to convey to the audience this idea of harmony. This is something that is clear throughout the show and I think it is one of the elements that makes it so spectacular,” she said.

Ms. Lo Presti expressed her appreciation for Shen Yun for sharing the message of humility.

“I think that the whole show sends humanity a great message, and not only to tell [Chinese] culture. It is to de-escalate mankind’s arrogance and make it (mankind) aware of how small it is compared to creation and the universe,” she said.

“Thus, [we need to] retrieve spirituality and [find] the right balance between mankind, nature, and the universe. I believe this is the biggest message [Shen Yun] tried to convey to us tonight.

“The message to go back to spirituality is an important message… Actually, it’s a message that everyone should respond to, all the people in the world, each with his own religion or faith. Everyone should reclaim this spiritual dimension, because actually, it is what brings everything in this world into balance,” Ms. Lo Presti said.

She also spoke about Shen Yun’s mission of reviving 5,000 years of Chinese civilization—a China before communism.

“I appreciated very much that such a diversified and colorful show was created to tell a rich, ancient tradition. I believe that all the world’s people should go back to our origins because if we are telling our history, it means we are somehow losing it, we’ve been stranded. We need to go back to our origins.

“Thus, [Shen Yun] gives a great example of this need to go back to our own tradition. Because by knowing who we are, we will also know where we need to go,” she said.

Ms. Lo Presti also discussed the solo performance of the erhu virtuoso. “Maybe I’m a bit biased because of my singer profession, but I had the feeling it was singing rather than an instrument, almost like a heavenly voice that was singing. And these harmonious and melodic notes went straight to my heart. They gave a feeling of serenity and tranquility,” she said.

“Leave With a Message”

Gary Heavin, a former company co-founder of fitness centres and now a movie producer, saw Shen Yun with his wife and niece in Houston, Texas, on June 3.

“I believe that entertainment can give you a warm feeling… but to leave with a message makes entertainment important,” Mr. Heavin said.

“We thoroughly enjoyed the beauty, but also the message that there is oppression in China, and we, who care about people, need to care about the message of the show,” he said.

Mr. Heavin said that the universal values and principles of Shen Yun resonated with his faith.

“I see [that] the Chinese ancient culture is understanding a return to heaven. The Creator would come back at the end of times… And in values… we would revere each other, we’d value life, we’d value our individuality—these are the messages that emanate from this wonderful program,” he said.

“The Falun Gong message was impactful,” Mr. Heavin said of the mini-dramas that depict the ongoing persecution of Falun Dafa.

“There’s a word in English, it was gritty… It kind of grinds you to a truth.

“To have that message in the midst of all the beauty and the splendor was important because we’re not all about the beauty and the dancing and the music, but there’s life out there that is being oppressed and we need to care,” he said.

“It Was a Reprieve”

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