Shen Yun Performing Arts

Today I had the chance to watch, what they called “A performance 5000 year in the making with heavenly music, enchanted landscapes, breathtaking dance, timeless legend, one unforgettable show and experience the extraordinary,” by Shen Yun Performing Arts.  Shen Yun was born in 2006 and located in New York.  The meaning of Shen Yun is about the grace, compassion, and sublime beauty of heavenly realms that are shown through the subtlest expressions and gestures of our dancer.  Shen Yun was here in Milwaukee, WI today (March 13, 2011) to show and expressed the Chinese’s culture through their art of dancing from the ancient time to the modern time at the Marcus Performance Center.

            There is total of 21 programs or dances such as: When kings followed the creator to the Earth, Recalling the great Qin, The Monkey King outwits Pigsy, the Opening of Heaven’s Gates, and many more.  Each performances or dances represented its own time and meaning to the Chinese’s culture.  The costumes and music were gorgeous with bright colors, and extraordinary music throughout the hall as the lights was off.  The music was combined with western instruments such as the violent and the Chinese instruments such as pipa to give us the glorious and excitement to the audience with their dance. 

The background was digital design with computer graphic to provide extraordinary of beauty of the landscape of China.  Each background was design to go along each theme of the dance.  With the brilliant color of the costumes and the digital background plus the glorious of music, I cannot help but keep my eyes and ears open the whole the time.  There is happy story to sad story but even in a sad story, it will end with happy. 

I do enjoyed watch every Shen Yun performing.  I remembered watched the opening (When Kings followed the Creator to the Earth), I was so surprised by bright color of the costumes and the dances and even more surprised when they took off the stage and seeing them flying to heaven  on the background screen.  I was also so amazed how the transition from one dancer changing his modern clothes to the army of Qin armor in split second.  The dance called Little Mischievous Monks was a joking theme and so funny and everyone was laughing and enjoyed the little monks playing trick with their teacher.  I would love to watch Shen Yun again and looked forward for their next year in Milwaukee again.