SYDNEY—Shen Yun Performing Arts International Company playing until Feb.23 at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney, is “like a golden thread” that links China’s past to the present.

That’s according to renowned ethicist Dr. Simon Longstaff, the executive director of St. James Ethic Centre, who was at the opening performance on Tuesday evening, Feb. 8.

Internationally-acclaimed, New York-based Shen Yun, one of three companies on its 2011 World Tour of cities in Europe, USA, Asia and Oceania, presents 5,000 years of China’s traditional values, portrayed through classical Chinese dance and music.

“Shen Yun is able to maintain something, like a golden thread going back into the history and traditions of the peoples of China that is not something which is dead, looked at as some kind of interesting museum piece, but its alive and you can see it,” Dr. Longstaff said.

“You can see it evolving and being interpreted, so, apart from all the entertainment—spectacle, fun, and excellence of the performance—it has a more serious element as well.”

He said the show was “like an ark somewhere, preserving things which could otherwise be lost,” but not in a way that is fixed in time forever.

“It’s got a spirit which is happy to play with those things as well, it respects the past but allows it to be informed by the present—and that is a very healthy mixture to develop.”

Dr. Longstaff said Shen Yun raised more questions for him than answers, because of its richness.

“You have a sense of the rich vein of history and tradition which is drawn upon and the lovely way in which it is integrated into contemporary perspective, but there is so much more that I could have got with better knowledge. So it makes you quite humble in the face of that depth when you can only scratch the surface,” he bemoaned.

“I think it is not just the length of the history, but also there is a tradition being displayed in classical dance. Many of the way the things are presented might even just be the turn of the hand, or a fan or something of that kind may be full of significance and I ought to know what to look for to spot.”

But having said that, for someone like Dr. Longstaff, there is also a sense of the universal which are also being explored, either in quite a serious way or through the elegance and skill of the performance as a whole, and refreshingly with humour, he said.

“Any presentation which is able to laugh with you and at itself, is full of quite considerable power.”

Dr. Longstaff was in awe of the hi-tech animated backdrops perfected to fit a performance at hand, and the Shen Yun Orchestra playing ground-breaking music, a fusion of Chinese and Western instruments.

“It was very clever, wonderful to see new technology being employed to help the audience and its imagination get some of those subtleties that otherwise would have to be presented in ways that I may have missed,” he said. “It was used to very good effect and I think that is always a joy to see art and media combining in intelligent and interesting ways.”

In conclusion, Dr. Longstaff believes one of the great benefits of Shen Yun existence is the golden thread shared among human beings around the world.

“In many ways we are very, very similar and we share 90 percent or more of the same DNA, so, effectively we are pretty much the same types of beings, but we are different in terms of our culture and language and those differences ought to be celebrated and preserved.”

Dr. Longstaff spent five years studying and working as a member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Having won scholarships to study at Cambridge, he read for the degrees of Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy. He was inaugural President of The Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics and is a Director of a number of companies. He is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum and a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Foreign Policy Association, based in New York.

Reporting by NTD Television and Raiatea Tahana-Reese.

Shen Yun Performing Arts International Company will perform in Sydney, Australia, at the Capitol Theatre through to Feb. 23. For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing.

Original article: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/50972/