User:HappyInGeneral/Shen Yun Performing Arts

Shen Yun Performing Arts, formerly known as Divine Performing Arts, is a Falun Gong-affiliated arts and entertainment company based in New York City.

It was founded in 2006. According to the company's mission statement, it is an art and entertainment group "independent of China’s communist regime" and seeks to return to the "core principles of traditional Chinese art", "to revive the true, five-millennia-old artistic tradition of China that thrived before decades of suppression by the Chinese communist state."

Content
Shen Yun's shows mainly feature singing and dancing performing art company composed of sixty dancers, singers and musicians. Traditional Chinese culture is a major source of inspiration. It contains sixteen different acts of "hundreds of dancers in two dozen carefully designed, richly costumed pieces - everything from colorful handkerchief dances, Imperial-style dances in high platform shoes, drum dances, folk dances and wushu displays". The acts are presented in both Chinese and the local language.

Traditional Chinese dance
There are three crucial elements in the traditional Chinese dance: the yun or manner of carrying one's body, the technique and the physical forms, which are used in the training of wushu martial artists. "Wushu, or martial arts, used in soft ways is dance, and vice versa."

Backdrop
Each act is accompanied by a full-width projected backdrop, that provided animation of "mountain scenes with snow, village scenes with rising smoke, countryside landscapes, and palaces."

Solo singers (2007)
These include:
 * Mezzo voice, by Min Jiang, singing "Celestial Maidens"
 * Alto, by Jiansheng Yang, singing "Tiananmen Please tell Me", "Lullaby"
 * Soprano, by Xiao Shi, "Auspicious Words", "Finding Truth"
 * Tenor by Guimin Guan, singing "Finding Myself", "Chakravartin"

The songs are in Chinese, but the lyrics, both in Chinese and the host country language, is projected to the backdrop "revealed their themes, dealing often with historical movements and their devoted disciples."

Instrument singers (2007)

 * Erhu, an ancient Chinese, a two-string violin.

Dances (2007)

 * "Dragon Dance"
 * "Resounding Drums"
 * "Mongolian Bowl Dance"
 * "Rainbows"
 * "Dai Ethnic Dance"
 * "Mulan"
 * "The Monk Who Endured"
 * "Reaping What is Sown"
 * "Mongolian plains"
 * "A Dunhuang Dream"
 * "Candlelight Vigil"
 * "Victory Drums"

Costumes
Both singers and dancers, where outfitted with brightly colored costumes, that uses a range of beautiful fabrics and intricate headpieces "with extreme attention to detail on accessories from jeweled tiaras to flowers, bows and even butterflies."

Show names
Initially the shows were titled "Chinese Spectacular", "Holiday Wonders" , and "Divine Performing Arts", but now the company mostly performs under its own name "Shen Yun".

International touring
Each year the Shen Yun Performing Arts show tours several countries, performing across Europe, North America, Oceania, and Asia. Shen Yun's shows have been staged in several leading stages, including New York’s Radio City Music Hall, London’s Royal Festival Hall, Washington DC’s Kennedy Center, and Paris’ Le Palais de Congrès

Reception
The show drawn praise from varied sources.


 * The San Francisco Chronicle described the show as a "visually dazzling tour of 5,000 years of Chinese history and culture via bravura displays of acrobatics and grand tales told through flourishes of Chinese classical dance".
 * The San Francisco Bay Times described the show as "An overwhelming theme ... a tremendous sense of spirit, a feeling of joy."
 * The Denver Post, considers that the show "revels in long-standing myths and legends through extraordinary costumes and vigorous physicality designed to appeal to diverse audiences", "Peace is an explicit message of Chinese New Year Spectacular, whether communicated through lilting, meditative music or delicate movements based on extensive historical research."
 * Jennifer Wesnousky, from Explore Dance considered that the "Chinese New Year Spectacular left its audience with the tranquil sensation of having witnessed something both enlightening and resplendent".

Critical reception
The contents of the shows have been described by various Western media outlets as political, aiming to promote the plight of Falun Gong and to criticize the Communist Party of China. The shows have also been described as propaganda for the spiritual movement. Most of the performers practice the discipline, and the show has been criticized by The Guardian for placing too much emphasis on Falun Gong, apparently contravening their stated mission to preserve the heritage of classical China. Additionally, The Guardian also criticized it as "a horribly Disneyfied version of the traditional Chinese culture," and "tainted by the political baggage that they carry".

Relation ship with the Chinese government
The government is actively preventing, the show that is offering a look into the 5,000-year-old culture, to be staged in China, because since 1949, since communism arrived in china, expression of traditional Chinese culture have been actively suppressed.

Chinese government also criticized NTDTV for airing the show thus reaching 200,000 people in 31 cities in 2007.