NEWARK, N.J.—Dance and music are often seen as universal languages because of their ability to transcend cultural boundaries. Gregory Thomas, a chiropractor, said that the dance and music performed by Shen Yun Performing Arts helped him better understand and appreciate Chinese culture.
“I think that the arts and dance and music [can] transcend cultures,” said Mr. Thomas, who watched Shen Yun at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center on May 6. “To see that arts is a way to very much appreciate whatever culture it comes from—in this case Chinese—[was] beautiful.”
Based in New York, Shen Yun was founded in 2006 and is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance and music company. Now with eight equally sized companies touring the world simultaneously, Shen Yun’s mission is to revive traditional Chinese culture and to give its audiences a glimpse of pre-communist China….