Shen Yun Performing Arts Global Company Returns From Europe
Since its inception in 2006, Shen Yun Performing Arts has been fast expanding. The 2023 world tour is its largest yet, with eight companies—up from seven last year—set to visit more than 180 cities across five continents.
The Shen Yun Performing Arts Global Company just finished the European leg of its tour, touching down in Newark, New Jersey where the artists were welcomed by Shen Yun fans.
“In Europe, we went to a total of eight countries, 15 different cities, and performed 63 shows,” said Zhou Zhengye, a principal dancer, in Newark on March 14. “The audiences were very, very enthusiastic.”
“All of our shows, we had at least two or three curtain calls because the audience would stand up, they wouldn’t leave, and they would just keep on clapping,” she said.
New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company, with a mission to revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilization.
Zhou said it was amazing “to be on stage at so many different countries, performing in front of so many different people, different age groups, different ethnicities, and even though we speak different languages, traditional culture is universal.”
Jesse Browde, principal dancer with Shen Yun, said “You could feel the energy from the audience, every single show.”
Browde shared a special experience in Paris: two Shen Yun companies actually crossed paths, and so the Global Company he is a part of was able to sit in the audience of a performance given by the Shen Yun Performing Arts New York Company.
“We were sitting in the back, so we could see everybody, all the audience members, and we could pretty much feel their excitement, and their energy, throughout the whole show,” Browde said. “Sometimes you can’t really see it on stage, you’re too busy dancing. But when you’re sitting in the audience, watching them watching another troupe, you really feel the energy.”
The Shen Yun Performing Arts Global Company has the unique opportunity of performing at Lincoln Center in New York City next month (April 6 to 16), a part of the tour that usually goes to the New York Company.
“As a New Yorker, as a person who grew up watching Shen Yun at Lincoln Center, I hope you guys enjoy it!” Browde said.
