Author Mimoza Kuchly is working on a book about a French woman who loves Chinese culture. Seeing Shen Yun Performing Arts’s revival of 5,000 years of Chinese civilization on stage was an inspiration for her.
“I am delighted I was able to find a seat for this show. I thought it was beautiful, beautiful. It was a great performance.” Kuchly saw the performance at the Palais des Congrès in Paris on Jan. 18, and felt emotions well up.
“Sincerely, I am thankful they had the idea to come and offer us Chinese culture so that we really can see it ‘on a platter.’ It’s a kind of information that comes to us, but this one was in full color,” said Kuchly. “So, we were dazzled, I was dazzled. I think it was something that presents the Chinese culture well. Those 5,000 [years] are not nothing. So, here I think the show went through all the stages, from old China to today, and that was great. So the colors, the dancers, so it was something that was really easy to pass on, or, we had the impression that all the dancers were like butterflies. The female dancers they were butterflies, and the male dancers they had this … a kind of what the epic characters bring to history, they had this, like ‘this is the moment’ feeling. So I really enjoyed it, it was great.”
The China Kuchly was familiar with was the one she saw on television or in films, mostly from the 60s onwards. After seeing Shen Yun, she was brimming with details about the Mongolian way of life, traditional Chinese stories, and the people.
“Yes, absolutely, that’s what I said about it, so it was the music, especially the music, it was 100 percent China that we found there. Now we have the impression that in our minds there is a kind of peace, it transmits that. It’s not something you find every day, frankly, so, right now I feel like I’ve been in, in old China and in your traditions, which are traditions that purify the mind.”
Traditional Chinese culture is built on values stemming from the concepts introduced by Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. These are principles like benevolence and justice, wisdom and propriety, and respect for the divine. For thousands of years, people believed that good begets good and evil begets evil, and central to civilization was the belief in harmony between man, heaven, and earth.
Kuchly saw value in these ideas even for the modern age.
“We need that today, it’s missing, and the show transmitted that easily, but easily, where maybe we were, we were thirsty for it, to see it. So it was something that directly affected the mind. It wasn’t just the look, but also the mind I think of all the spectators who saw it there,” said Kuchly. “The message of this show went well. So we need this peace from within, this divinity that everyone comes into the world with something, comes into the world with this spirit, I have the impression that we are all the same, and if the world continues to be really with this prosperity, it has been really good for everyone, for everyone.”
NTD News, Paris, France
