Jan 25, 2010

Curtain call on Tuesday evening at Hamilton Place. (Lisa Fan/The Epoch Times)

As Shen Yun Performing Arts continues its tour of eastern Canada, audiences remain captivated by the show's classical Chinese dance, music, and stories taken from traditional Chinese culture.

The New York-based performing arts company has undertaken a unique mission to delve deeply into the ancient artistic traditions and culture of China's rich 5,000-year history.

Independent of the current communist regime in China, Shen Yun aims to revive the nearly lost traditions of China's performing arts and bring them to audiences around the world.

After performing to full houses in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ottawa, Montreal, and Hamilton, Shen Yun will stage three sold-out shows in Mississauga before returning to the U.S. The company will come back to Canada for shows in the western provinces in March.

Kitchener-Waterloo, the first stop on Shen Yun's Canadian tour, brought full houses, standing ovations, and curtain calls at the three-show run at Centre In The Square theatre.

"Perhaps the most exciting part is the actual blending of the music, which is so lovely, but also the artistry, the dance, the movement, and the colours. The colours are so vibrant, the music is so vital, the entertainment is just terrific," said Dr. Ken Coates, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Waterloo.

Cambridge city councillor Ben Tucci saw the show last season and made sure to attend again this year.

"You leave the show with a very good feeling, a warm heart. ... If you were able to find a way to package the show into a formula and send it to the world leaders, we would have a better world," he said.

Three sold-out shows played at Ottawa's National Arts Centre with audiences clamoring to buy the last standing-room tickets to see the performances.

"You simply have to see it to believe it. ... It was just spectacular," said Ottawa city councillor Glenn Brooks, noting that he was most touched by two dances that depicted the persecution of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice rooted in ancient Chinese traditions. Combining heroic stories from China's past with those of the modern age is a hallmark of the Shen Yun shows.

"There's a wow factor to everything I saw today," said Senator Elizabeth Hubley. "It was just a very moving and spiritual and entertaining afternoon, altogether."

Senator Hubley was a dance instructor for many years and in 1980 established her own dance studio Stepping Out, where she continues to serve as artistic director and principal choreographer.

"The show was absolutely stunning," she said. "It was just astonishing in its exuberance and its colour, in the choreography, in the music. It was enjoyable from the beginning to the end. It was a wonderful show ... The choreographies were so individual and so unique."

With four performances at Montreal's most famous theatre, Place des Arts, Shen Yun made an impression on the city's discerning artistic community.

"This is a show of very, very high quality. I guess they [the dancers] must work like crazy for sure. I can just imagine what they must go through to be ready," said Isabelle Paquette, a soloist dancer for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens.

"I know it takes hours and hours of work. That's obvious and it shows on stage."

One of Canada's top fashion designers and winner of Fashion Export Award 2004, Denis Gagnon, walked away with fresh inspiration. "Personally, I'm so afraid to take a chance with colour," he said. "I often design in dark colours. Tonight, I saw beautiful colours. I wanted to hide and take pictures to capture on film the colours that I found beautiful in this light ... the movements too, the movement of the material with those colours ... I found it very inspiring."

Hamilton's near-capacity audience echoed those sentiments.

"It's beautiful, it's fantastic--it's probably the most beautiful dancing I have seen in a very long time," said Megan Robb, a ballet dance of 22 years and teacher at the Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts after seeing Shen Yun Performing Arts' debut performance in Hamilton.

"The jumping that they are capable of blows me away ... and everything else is beautiful. The athleticism behind it is stunning--absolutely stunning," she said.

With an all-new program for the 2010 season, Shen Yun's lavish productions are inspired from a long and thorough study of China's authentic traditions. Shen Yun takes as its mission to revive and further those traditions.

Shen Yun Performing Arts International Company, one of Shen Yun's three touring groups currently touring the world, will finish the eastern Canadian tour in Mississauga on Saturday.