(Clearwisdom.net) After seeing the Divine Performing Arts show (DPA) at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium on December 30, Mr. Demulle, a newspaper editor, was more than a little surprised.
"The first thing that hit me was 'Wow! Look at the costumes, look at the dancers.' I'd never seen anything like this," Mr. Demulle said.
"I just sat there saying, 'Wow--the choreography.' And keep in mind, the only thing I could relate this to are shows that I've seen in Las Vegas, where it's all flash. But you don't leave there saying, 'Wow, I feel good.'"
Mr. Demulle said the hosts of the show, who introduced each performance, were "leading me by the hand, showing me things that I didn't even know existed, and believe me, I was impressed."
Through the medium of Chinese classical dance, DPA strives to convey the beauty and goodness of traditional Chinese culture, something quite different to anything Mr. Demulle had experienced in a show.
"I would say that if you want to see something that's beautiful, that makes you feel good, and will open you up to a whole new concept--I don't want to say religion, but I want to say spirituality--and by using the concept of beauty, then you can find something within yourself. As I told my associate: 'I want to bring you to things like this, so you can see what I feel.'"
Mr. Demulle pointed out the contrast between the DPA presentation and people today who "dress strangely, with pins in their eyes and looking like demons."
"What happened to beauty?" he asked.
His favorite program in the show was the dance "The Udumbara's Bloom." The Udumbara blossoms every 3,000 years and is believed in Buddhism to be a sign of blessings and good fortune. Udumbara flowers were reportedly seen in several countries in 2008.
"The flower that only blooms every 3,000 years.... After the show I knew that every 3,000 years it opens up, and at that point in time it becomes an event. I'm going to look into a lot of this."
After experiencing the depth and richness of the DPA presentation, Mr Demulle said he wants to use his newspaper to awaken a sense of aesthetics in his readers and to "share this spiritually by showing this beauty."
"I'm going to write about this in the paper, and then, based on my viewer context, I'll either expand on it or just keep going along the way I do. I am a different kind of editor. In fact, the motto on our paper is that it's the paper with an attitude, and we call it exactly the way we see it.
"This is the way life should be. There is beauty all around us, and you know, I'm an editor, so I'm going to show this to my readers."
http://en.epochtimes.com/n2/content/view/9730/