NYT Best-Selling Author: Shen Yun is ‘Hopeful and Powerful’

October 13, 2021

Shen Yun Performing Arts, a classical Chinese dance company from New York, gave 10 performances that touched hearts in four states throughout the weekend of Oct. 9.

After a long pause during the pandemic, audiences finally got to see Shen Yun and experience divinely inspired traditional Chinese culture before that heritage was ruined by communism.

Watching for the first time in Louisville, Kentucky, David West Reynolds, the author of multiple Star Wars reference books, a New York Times best-selling author, and an archeologist, said this night sparked hope.

“I’m honored to have been able to see [Shen Yun] in my lifetime—to see an artist of his caliber, bringing together a company like this and this kind of production, to share this kind of performance,” he said, referring to D.F., the artistic director of Shen Yun Performing Arts.

“Shen Yun does this, it shows us the whole range of who we are, but it also shows us who we can be. And that’s the hope of it,” he added. “That’s why you don’t come out crushed by the tragedy because it’s there with the message of hope. And the way it’s presented so powerfully that it makes me believe that. And that’s what I’m most grateful for in this performance: that it makes me believe that the ancient traditions, the ancient values, are what will get us through all of this that’s so heartbreaking in the modern world.”

The tragedy-to-hope stories Reynolds referred to are pieces in the show that depict the ongoing persecution against Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that was once openly practiced in China. Shen Yun’s programs draw inspiration from modern tales close to real stories of persecution taking place in China today, as well as from the vast history of Chinese culture, values, and teachings.

Steven Stringberg, a partner at a financial consulting firm in Kansas City, waited for two years to see the show. He told NTD with tears in his eyes, “I appreciate the … bravery … really because of the disgusting things going on in China, and all these kids [the performers] are bringing it to light. And the rest of it is just fantastic.”

Tears and emotions seemed to be the theme of this past weekend. Pamela Skarda, the former vice president of the Institute for Market Transformation, watched the show in Kansas City, Missouri. She explained her experience was more spiritual. “The last scene on compassion, I literally had a spiritual experience, my heart just opened with divine love. It was, I could feel every cell of my body vibrating as the divine. It was just phenomenal.”

She added that the performance was “utterly phenomenal, the best performance I’ve ever seen in my life. Absolutely majestic.”

Overwhelmed with tears after watching the show, she said, “These artists, they are meticulous in their form. It is precision, it is God incarnate on stage. It is perfection. It [Shen Yun] is a universal spiritual experience of the divine in the human form, that we are all God’s children.”

The Shen Yun 2021 tour will perform in three states this week.

To find out more, visit ShenYun.com

NTD News