Growing up, Sunni Zhou often watched dance performances with her parents, who took her to see ballet, hip hop, and other dance styles. But when she attended a production by Shen Yun Performing Arts, the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company, she was immediately entranced. Based in New York, the company’s mission is to revive…
Classical Chinese Dance: A Process of Self-Improvement to Achieve Inner Beauty
Depicting China’s Real-Life Tragedies Through Dance
Though Angela Lin is a dancer, she finds the process of mastering her craft similar to the process of reading and understanding classical Chinese poems. “You need to dig deep into the meaning behind the words to understand what the author means, because the words are often conveying the message indirectly,” she said in a…
Of Pianos, Hope, and the Future
Where there is a piano, there is hope. There is hope because where there is a piano, someone nearby knows how to play it and is capable of teaching others to play. And this activity—taking and giving piano lessons—will save the world. Hyperbole? Of course. But truth-based. Piano lessons are instruction in how to coordinate…
Overcoming Cultural Barriers and Discovering Heritage Through Dance
The gravity-defying leaps and flips of classical Chinese dance have certainly attracted more than one young dancer to take up the ancient form—Daniel Zhang is one of them. “I was the kind of kid who couldn’t sit still; I was always moving,” Zhang said. At age 8 or 9, he attended a classical Chinese dance…
American Treasures: Burl Ives, a Legend of Folk Music and Much More
If nothing else, younger readers will at least know the distinctive, slightly scratchy voice of the great Burl Ives from the perennial Christmas songs “Holly Jolly Christmas” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” These songs are both from the beloved NBC stop-motion-animated TV special of the latter title (1964), still aired annually, in which Ives performed the…
The Not-So-Dying Art of the Barbershop Quartet
One of the great apple-pie traditions of American music, right up there with a marching band or Dixieland band, is the good old barbershop quartet. My mind goes right to those white gazebos in parks and town squares and those beribboned straw hats, big mustaches, and striped jackets that barbershop quartets typically sport. While thinking…
Programming Alert: 9th NTD International Classical Chinese Dance Competition Final Livestream
The ninth NTD International Classical Chinese Dance Competition will be held in New York state Sept. 2–5. NTD and The Epoch Times will livestream the final round of the competition, as well as the technical showcase from previous gold winners and the awards ceremony at 1 p.m. ET on Sept. 5. Audience members can watch the livestream…
Victor Li: A Gentleman and a Scholar
This is Victor Li’s fifth time entering the NTD TV International Classical Chinese Dance Competition. For most aspiring classical Chinese dancers, this competition is a rite of passage, one chaired by many of the same artists who helped put this 5,000-year-old art form on the map worldwide. “I don’t think I’ll enter again,” added Li, a…
Truth Tellers: Tchaikovsky and His Reaching Toward Sublimity
A young student, having just met the elder Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, made a remark suggesting that composers wrote initially by inspiration. Tchaikovsky, he recalled, “made an impatient gesture with his hand and said with annoyance: ‘Ah, young man, don’t be trite! You can’t await inspiration,’ according to musicology professor David Brown in “Tchaikovsky Remembered.” “What…
Through Classical Chinese Dance, a Grander Vision of the World
The first time Michael Hu saw Shen Yun Performing Arts, he was filled with excitement and struck with the idea that he was going to be a dancer. If a picture told a thousand words, then Shen Yun was a series of pictures that added up to a performance capable of conveying 5,000 years of…
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