(Clearwisdom.net) Shen Yun Performing Arts graced the stage at Edmonton's Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium on April 15-16, 2009.

Dancer: "I felt a revelation, an opening of consciousness"

Mr. Yakimishyn, a Ukrainian dance instructor, singer/songwriter, and composer, was in the audience watching the show. He attended the performance with his wife last year. He commented, "It is very beautiful, graceful, flowing, dynamic, dramatic. I love all the different patterns, the different story lines. It's a very beautiful show, very wonderful."

Mr. Yakimishyn, a Ukrainian dance instructor, singer/songwriter, and composer (NTDTV)

Mr. Yakimishyn expounded on two of the dance performances featuring female performers and flowers blooming, "Welcoming Spring" and "The Udumbara's Bloom." "I love the flowers and how the flowers opened, the pink flowers and I also loved the other flower dance, with the flower that blossoms every 3,000 years--that dance was very beautiful, very stunning. It just seemed to have a radiating love, a sense of vibration of love, and it seems like it was at the core and essence of humanity. It just seemed to have that sense. It struck me that way, and I could feel it down my spine."

It was the feeling the dancers and music emanated that spoke deeply to Mr. Yakimishyn. "I felt a revelation, an opening of consciousness of humanity and an awareness of the eternal, of the divine, it seemed to have that sense. And that it is something very, very special."

"I liked the promoting of peace, love, and humanity. That is something I feel very close to in my heart, and I can see it very much in the dancers. I can see it very much in their feelings, through their expressions, through their movements. I can relate to that very much as a dancer and a performer myself."

Mr. Yakimishyn enjoyed the music played by the orchestra very much, "Oh, beautiful music. Very professional musicians! You can tell the people have spent many, many hours in training. The music was very well-orchestrated. The arrangements were very beautiful. With dancers it all blended very, very beautifully. I loved the two-stringed instrument [erhu]. She played so beautifully, right from the heart, you could feel her vibrations coming through in her music, very beautifully."

Mr. Yakimishyn said the erhu gave him a "very profound feeling" and that its sound went "right to the core" of his being. "It is beautiful when an artist can bring this out in their instrument. Through the beautiful presentation, you have a sense of the people of ancient times. It's not just the present times. I think that culture is the most beautiful way to express tradition."

The message he is taking with him and will remember for a long time is, "The tranquility, the peacefulness, the discipline and the focus on heart are expressing peace from within, in your expression though your dance, through your art, through your singing. I think that those are the high points of humanity."

Deputy Mayor: "The show was fantastic"

Amongst the appreciative audience was Doug Gill, deputy mayor of Ponoka. "The show was fantastic. Costumes were great. A lot of the traditional cultural things we don't understand or know about China, so it was very good to be here. I'm glad we came," he said smiling.

Doug Gill, deputy mayor of Ponoka

Mr. Gill thought the show's stories and themes "were easy to interpret."

College Manager: Shen Yun Holds a Message of "Cultural Pride"

Ms. Steele, the manager of the School of Communications at an Edmonton college, thought the show was "fabulous, fantastic, very inspiring." She said she felt that Shen Yun holds a message of "cultural pride ... exuberance, enthusiasm, and confidence, all good things."

Ms. Steele, manager of the School of Communications at an Edmonton college

"I think as much as we can learn and understand from other cultures, our family, and the rest of the world, the more it draws us together and hopefully we will find peace with one another."

Ms. Steele was also impressed by the dances, "I just love all of the dances, all of them are very unique and different, and very, very professional. Something I've never seen before, very interesting."

She said she would recommend the show to others, "What I'd like to tell future audiences about the show is that it's very dynamic, very energetic, very entertaining, and I think quite inspirational. I definitely recommend it."

Awestruck and Spellbound

Ms. Hook excitedly exclaimed, "You put me in awe. I'm spellbound! It was superb. Superb, that means excellent. It's almost perfection. It's excellent. ... They're skilled. It's fine dancing. It's beyond words. I could pick out all the super words and they all go together. It was wonderful. What else can I say?"

Bubbling with excitement she talked about the dancers' costumes. "Oh, they were beautiful. ... I saw the materials and I noticed there's no pattern on the materials. The costumes are all just plain colors but the material was very feminine. I read the program book about the choreography and the people that put it together. I mean, it's artistic," Ms. Hook said.

She also praised the dancers' talents and their feather-light movements. "It was beautiful. It was perfect. The ladies just flowed when they walked and they were all even. That's a lot of talent. Very few people can do that."

3-D Backdrop: "Very well incorporated"

Mr. Vanderschaaf, a home renovation expert and drummer, attended the show with his daughter, Angelina, a student and part-time office administrator.

Mr. Vanderschaaf, a home renovation expert and drummer, and his daughter, Angelina

"The fan performance ["Welcoming Spring"] ... was incredible. The fans, the way the fans came out ... and the way they were dancing, and then it came to a full circle," said Angelina.

Mr. Vanderschaaf particularly liked the Tang Court Drummers. "The coordination was very, very good, very colorful. I think some of the moves I saw them doing there looked like they'd be very, very hard to do, and to keep the rhythm and to keep dancing at the same time, so I thought that was very well done," he said.

Both father and daughter thought that the show was top-class. "I would say a 10 from what I've seen, what I have experienced, it's a 10," Angelina said. Her father agreed, "I would say it's very well done, I can't find any fault with it anywhere. I like the way they've incorporated the graphics, the video and the screen, and then have the performers come up from underneath, that was very interesting."

Mr. Vanderschaaf was impressed with the state-of-the-art 3-D digital backdrop, saying, "Very well incorporated. I haven't seen that before, where you bring new technology into old culture, bringing the two together, I thought that was done really well."

Angelina said, "We will recommend it to other people and, like I said, it's very much a cultural experience, you get to experience everything ... it is just very professionally done."

Ms. Smale, a visual artist, said she was, "...amazed at the color and the light. It's amazing how strong the performers are and how they can do so much."

She thought the show was, "...gorgeous, just like magic. It's just like a feast, a feast for your eyes. All the beautiful colors and all blending, and the way, you remember the one with the skirts ["Dance of the Yi"] I loved that."

Ms. Smale said she was very impressed with the dancers. "I was overcome with respect and admiration for them, that they could do something like that. So strong ... I just thought they were amazing because they were so strong ... their strength and energy."

In commenting about the backdrop, she said, "Well yeah, of course that's magic, isn't it?"

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