HONOLULU, Hawaii—Sharing their third show at the Blaisdell Concert Hall with yet another delighted audience on Saturday night, June 5, Shen Yun Performing Arts' visit to Hawaii is drawing to a close.

The New York-based artists continue to touch the hearts and minds of viewers around the world with their glorious revival, according to their Website, of China's rich 5000-year-old culture through the divine arts of classical Chinese dance and music.

Charity Willhoit, of Chinese heritage (her Chinese name is Lei Chian), attended Shen Yun with her husband Travis who has just finished his service as a non-commissioned officer in the Navy. The couple are both learning to speak Mandarin at the Defense Language Institute, and are also using the study aid on the New Tang Dynasty Television Website.

Ms. Willhoit loved the show, saying enthusiastically, "It was great. It was really great!"

Her husband agreed, adding, "It was beautiful. The arts, the dancing, it was awesome."

He was particularly impressed by the erhu, a two-stringed instrument played with a double bow to produce a gentle, sometimes wistful tone comparable to the human voice in its variety of sound.

Ms. Willhoit also appreciated the erhu, saying, "Yes that was very relaxing. I liked that a lot." She enjoyed Heavenly Maidens, a dance which portrays graceful ladies, clad in floating skirts and silken cloaks, gliding joyfully in a celestial land.

She also mentioned how much she liked Fairies of the Clouds, adding, "when they raised their arms they looked like angels, I thought". In this piece, the dancers create a tableau of divine beauty, using fans made of white feathers to depict clouds in their pure and carefree home amidst the heavens.

Ms. Willhoit was impressed at how the show embraced China's diverse ethnic origins, commenting, "I loved how they captured the different minority groups of China, and their culture. I thought that was really cool because you don't get to see that very often unless you're watching specific movies that document that kind of thing."

She enjoyed being exposed to the ancient culture of her ancestors, particularly as she is studying Mandarin, and was interested to learn more about the current situation in China where practitioners of the peaceful spiritual discipline of Falun Gong are being persecuted under the communist regime. She was concerned that some of her curriculum was based on propaganda and had requested that her teachers provide the other side of the story so that students can decide for themselves what the truth of the matter is.

She concluded with her overall impression of Shen Yun's spiritual message, commenting, "I thought it was very good, maybe eye-opening for people who are not familiar with that, who haven't read about religious persecution in China. So I thought that was very good, I liked it."
'They don't have gravity!'

Ayumi Kumaki and Lance Mizumoto were also impressed by the show. Ms. Kumaki has some dancing experience and said enthusiastically, "I'm not really professional, but I really appreciate that. I know how much they've got to do training and they're amazing, amazing!"

She continued in her praise of the dancers' technique, adding, "I thought they're maybe really young like two or four years old or five they got to training. That's what I thought, because it's so ... they don't have gravity!"

Ms. Kumaki particularly appreciated the skill of the male dancers, elaborating, "I loved actually the guy dancers. ... it's beautiful and it's so much contour in the body—amazing."

 'Colors all meld well together'

Grace Lee is a psychologist with Chinese heritage. She enjoyed the performance, commenting, "Yes, it's very interesting, I love the long sleeves, and visually it's very appealing, and the backdrop is really interesting, and colors all meld well together."

The state-of-the-art backdrops, according to the Shen Yun Website, add depth and grandeur to the stories depicted in the dances, and are carefully coordinated to match costumes and choreography. Viewers are transported across China's vast expanse from the steppes of Mongolia to the Tibetan plateau, from the Miao rice paddies to the Emperor's palace, and even to heavenly dimensions.

Ms. Lee found the story lines interesting, particularly in dances such as Wu Song Battles the Tiger. This piece is based on a beloved Chinese novel called Outlaws of the Marsh in which a village is terrorized by a man-eating tiger until the arrival of an unlikely hero who has to drink three bowls of the local wine before he can pluck up enough courage to face the beast.

With reporting by Alex Li and Fanny Qiu.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. For more information, please visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org

Original article: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/36957/