OTTAWA, Canada—As a graphic designer, Milena Hrebacka noted how much she enjoyed the many visual elements in the Shen Yun production and how they made the performance of the New York-based classical Chinese dance and music company remarkable.
“The use of color is very engaging as well. You don’t want to look away.”
“Symbolism was very strong within the choreography and the costume design and the props,” she said.
“I could tell that there was a lot of thought and care put into the costume design, and they looked very authentic.”
“The storytelling is really remarkable,” she said. “I was very surprised by how deep the stories went and how they developed the characters. That was very interesting to me.”
She said she takes away from the performance the importance of “being respectful and loving and kind towards humanity.”
“I was just so impressed with the physical capabilities and athleticism of all the dancers,” Mr. Yamanaka said.
He praised “their ability to put their leg right above their head and hold it there with stability and strength,” noting that he admired this in both the male and female dancers.”
“We’re going to recommend it to everybody,” he said.
‘This Was Special’
Seymour Eisenberg, owner of a company in the insurance and investment field before his retirement, brought some two dozen family members with him and his wife to see Shen Yun to celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary.“Marvellous,” said Mr. Eisenberg of the performance. “Truthfully, it was more magnificent than any play. This was special.”
“We need that in our world,” he said.
Among Mr. and Mrs. Eisenberg’s family members who attended the performance was their daughter Selena, a professional storyteller.
“It was a beautiful, lovely show, and all the dancers and musicians [were] incredibly talented,” Ms. Eisenberg said.
And as a storyteller, she especially enjoyed the art of storytelling in the show, combined with the expressiveness of classical Chinese dance and Shen Yun’s patented animated backdrop.
“The dancers ... were so expressive in their interaction with one another that it was so interesting, because they really helped the story unfold,” Ms. Eisenberg said, and the backdrop was “seamlessly well-done” in presenting interactions between the projection on the screen and the performers on stage.
She was also “very, very captivated with the host and hostess.” In their introduction to each segment of dance or music, they “did exactly what a storyteller would do—they hooked us in, by beginning to tell the tale in a few sentences of what we would be seeing so that we could understand it.”
“I was captivated the whole time,” Ms. Eisenberg said. “It was intriguing and beautiful.”
“More great successes,” said Mr. Eisenberg in his wish for Shen Yun.
