The voices of Shen Yun’s bel canto singers filled the air, resonating through the auditorium.
Daniel Forbes, who advises architects and designers in acoustics, felt the power of Shen Yun’s singers as he sat in the front row of Shen Yun Performing Arts.
“It was something else being there,” he said, after watching the performance at The Lowry Salford on April 20.
Shen Yun singers are uniquely trained to sing in Chinese using the traditional bel canto technique. Forbes was moved by the translation of the Chinese lyrics, which are projected on the backdrop.
“Some of the words of the songs, they were inspiring hope and inspiring love and humanity,” he said.
It’s a positive theme that he felt throughout the performance. In some scenes, dancers appear to fly up into the heavens, as their jumps are perfectly in sync with the animated backdrop.
“It was really clever how they used the projection and the screens at the back,” said Forbes. “It worked well with the architecture of the stage as well. It was really good.”
Through dance, the performers bring to life stories, myths, and legends from China’s 5,000 years of divinely inspired culture, and capture the essence of the many ethnic groups that make up China. Audiences were particularly touched by the elegance of the dancers.
“In modern society, certainly in modern British society, we’ve lost a little bit of elegance and that beautiful movement, the smoothness of the movement. We’ve become more everyday and coarse, slightly coarse. So I find it very refreshing as an example of how we might live our lives,” said Member of the Order of the British Empire Thomas Protheroe. “The divine is in each of us, therefore you should express that gift by song, by dance, by whatever talents you have been given—you should express your inner person by those various forms.”
“The love and humanity in the messages, it’s something that everyone needs to hear, so it’s fantastic that it’s going round the world,” said Forbes. “It’s something you can be reminded of each year if you come back and see it again.”
NTD News, Salford, United Kingdom
