When Shen Yun Performing Arts, the Chinese classical dance and music extravaganza, pulls into the Sony Centre this week for a five-show run (January 13 – 16), it will be a kind of homecoming for principal dancers Cindy Liu, above left, and Lily Wang, right, both of whom were born in China but spent their formative years in Toronto.
Given the demands of a gruelling touring schedule, neither dancer was available for an interview but the Shen Yun production company, New York-based NDTV, provided translations of interviews with both performers.
Born in Beijing and raised in Toronto, Cindy Liu is a former leading dancer of Canadian Lotus Arts. She has been touring with Shen Yun since 2006.
In 2007 Lily Wang was admitted to Fei Tian Academy of the Arts in the US and within a year, she received an honourable mention for her performance during the second NTDTV International Chinese Classical Dance Competition, exposure that led to her joining Shen Yun the following year.
Flow with Pure Rhythm: Interview with Cindy Liu
Q. As one of the most experienced dancers of Shen Yun, you’ve been with the group for four years, helping to build it into a global brand. You must be pleased about that.
Cindy: I am proud of being able to develop with Shen Yun for the past years. At the beginning we had just one dancing group and one orchestra doing the global tour, but now we have three dancing groups and three orchestras, 300 performers in total, touring globally. What an amazing thing we did in just four years! In those years, tears always accompanied laughter. Many people tell me that “it must be very hard and tiring to dance.” However, I feel very happy every day. Though it is really hard to dance, I feel very warm and motivated. I feel that I am doing something worthy and significant whenever I see the heartfelt ovations from the audience and see the tears on their faces.
Q. Shen Yun Performing Arts presents a totally new program every year and you’ve done many different dances. Where does this creative inspiration originate and what are your guiding ideas?
Cindy: The ideas that guide the dances are based on Chinese traditions and culture. Most of the inspirations come from 5,000 years of Chinese history. It is a huge resource from which any episode can be demonstrated on stage. Our dances, such as the Loyalty to The Country by Yue Fei; Mulan In the War, Chang’er Flying to the Moon, Wu Song Fighting Tiger and many others, present benevolence, righteousness, mannerism and wisdom. The dances credit the five deity-based virtues in Chinese culture.
The dance titled The Dancing Fairy Lady presents the beauty and purity of lotus flowers. The piece indicates that as humans, we should maintain nobility and purity like the lotus flower that remains stainless while growing from mud. This is actually the value concept of Chinese traditional culture. The long and light sleeves from the dance titled White Lotus Flower from the Snow Mountains, symbolize the Tibetan Hada that sends good wishes and respect. From the dignified steps and costume patterns we see the Tibetan cultural implications. On the stage, both colors and movements should be completely pure and beautiful, which combine to touch and win the audiences.
Q. How do you achieve this purity and beauty that you mentioned?
Cindy: While enjoying Chinese classical dance, the more you watch it, the more difference and beauty you will find in it. Chinese classical dance, like the Chinese poems and calligraphy, focuses more on the spirit, although the physical part is also very important. Whether it is a turn or jump, you can incisively and vividly express the inner emotions through rhythm and techniques. Chinese classical dance focuses on water-like circular movements and smoothness. Besides perfecting the skills, a dancer should also focus on inner self-cultivation, and always maintain tranquility and peace. Only through this the purity, elegance and gracefulness implied and expressed by the performance can move the viewers.
Being based on the divine, Chinese culture would have no spirit if is detached from the divine. There are many legends and philosophies passed down in Chinese culture. You need to explore these cultural backgrounds and implications of the dances to be an excellent and qualified dancer.
Q. Do you need huge persistence and determination to be a professional dancer?
Cindy: Every performer in the group is working hard because we want to bring the best and most beautiful [performance] to the audiences. We spend many hours every day in basic training as well as doing rhymes, techniques, folk and ethnical dances, and waist, legs and tumbling technique trainings. There is another very special training: doing 300 kicks every day. It is designed to improve the flexibility, control, explosiveness and stamina of dancers.
In addition to these, Shen Yun Performing Arts also attaches much importance to knowledge and cultural education. In our spare time we read about history, poetry and prose, which help a lot to improve our inner selves. I love Li Bai’s poems and sometimes indulge myself in reading poetry such as “Rains follow dark clouds and smoke rises above water surface” and “The autumn river shares a scenic hue with the vast sky.” While dancing the Water Sleeves and other dances, “The evening glow parallels with a lonely flying duck” suddenly comes into my mind.
Q. What impressed you the most during your touring trips to over 100 cities in Europe, America and Asia?
Cindy: During a curtain call in Slovakia all the audiences stood up with never-ending applauses, many of them shouting bravos. All of them stood still and no one left. We answered five curtain calls at that time. Something inside moved me. The unfamiliar but amiable faces looking so warm and intimate made me feel they found some hope from the performance.
Q. As a Canadian citizen, how do you feel every time you tour around Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver and other Canadian cities?
Cindy: I feel at home every time I come back, though I have been to so many countries. I love Canadian simplicity, hospitality and tolerance. I love Toronto, where different cultures and customs co-exist in harmony and where you can taste different foods and find many funny things.
Q. In the Fourth International Chinese Classical Dance Competition in September 2009, you won the gold award at the youth group competition with the Celestial Music dance. You must be very proud of this accomplishment, where did you get the idea for the dance?
Cindy: I did not expect to win the gold as there were so many excellent contestants. I made it based on the two prophecy poems titled “Pipa Celestial Ladies from the West Play” and “Shine the Colourful Costumes with Fresh Look,” from the most famous Tang Dynasty prophecy book Tui Bei Tu. In the dance I presented a graceful and beautiful, ancient Chinese lady dancing with a Pipa in her arms. The most difficult part was to probe into the depth of implications to express the inner-outer, harmonized beauty of Chinese traditional ladies.
Q. What message would you like to share with our readers?
Cindy: The profound and abundant Chinese traditional culture is the bond that connects all Chinese, especially our overseas Chinese who feel we have a root wherever we go and live. Shen Yun Performing Arts can wake you up from the bottom of your heart. As a member of the group I see with my eyes that many viewers are moved to tears. I sincerely invite everyone to enjoy our show and feel the pure truthfulness, compassion and beauty.
Blossoming Through Dance: Interview with Lily Wang
Q. What motivates you to dance?
Lily: I started learning dance and piano at the age of 4. My mother sent me to a dancing school close by, run by a famous dancer. I was too young then to understand and experience anything special from dance. In fact, in the beginning I felt pain and dullness. I wanted to quit.
Later we moved to a place far from the school and my parents forced me to go all the way across the city to continue studying dance. After going through the first tribulations, I began to feel something and started to enjoy it, which kept dancing. My parents later told me they wanted to help me develop persistence in doing things. Looking back I really appreciate what they have done for me.
Q. Shen Yun focuses on classical Chinese dance. What effect does it have on you?
Lily: Classical Chinese dance has a complete set of training methods for foundational skills such as jumps, turns and flips, and demanding aerial techniques. There is a strict regimen for perfecting bearing and form, which is rooted in Chinese traditional culture. It can express many things that many dances cannot.
From Shen Yun’s Chinese classic dance, I learned how to develop the special gracefulness and gentleness that ancient Chinese girls used to possess, which modern girls mostly lack. The Chinese ancient literature and courses offered by Fei Tian Academy of the Arts also help us understand the culture behind the dances. It is hard to believe that a group of young performers growing up in western society can interpret the profoundness and depth of the classical Chinese dance in such a perfect way. Viewers are surprised that we bring the historical figures and heroes to live on the stage.
In addition, the culture and tradition behind the story interpreted by dance also changes us imperceptibly every day. For myself I used to be like a boy but now I am becoming more gentle, quiet and careful.
Q. From what you have said, it seems not easy to do classical Chinese dance, especially dancing in Shen Yun.
Lily: Yes the training is hard. You have to use strength wisely rather than forcibly. Many times you need hundreds of times to perfect a particular skill. While dancing you need to be 100 per cent concentrated on what you are doing. The second your thoughts wander, a wrong step is made. You will either move faster than the others or come a little bit out of the line. This undermines the effect of a Shen Yun dance, which typically requires cooperation from dozens of dancers. A dancer should bring the best and most beautiful part of herself or himself to the audience once on stage.
Q. Could you tell us about your life with Shen Yun?
Lily: Each day is fulfilling and joyful. Every training, rehearsal and tour performance is a learning and enriching process. I like traveling very much. When I was a child I often heard my parents talk about different countries and their customs after a trip, and it inspired me a lot. I have never imagined that I could one day visit so many countries and cities while touring with Shen Yun. We still had time to visit great historical places while touring, though our schedule was tight.
Our performing group is like a big family. Everyone helps each other like brothers and sisters whenever one of us gets into some trouble or aggravation. We are open to criticism and are happy for each other’s improvements. Whenever problems pop up we look inward rather than outward and do not shun responsibilities. Standing on the stage, whether it is in the front or back, we are a one-body with clean and clear minds. We are without an ego but with only one goal: to bring to the audience the best and most wonderful.
Our director and teachers are all experienced artists. They are strict while teaching and guiding rehearsals, and keeping parents and friends out of classes. We respect them, but do not fear them. In such a group we all improve fast, both in life and in learning. Our average scores and excellence ratings were high in the New York SAT exams, though we did not spend much time in general knowledge courses as other regular schools did.
Q. Did you ever think of becoming a professional dancer?
Lily: I had never thought of that before I joined Shen Yun though I studied dance at very early age. My grandpa is a successful engineer who, like all other families, expected me to go to a famous university. He was not happy with my choice. However, after watching our DVD my family was moved. They said they were proud of me as they saw the hope of revival of Chinese traditional culture and morals.
I feel very honoured and strongly purposeful to be a member of Shen Yun and carry forward the divine-inspired Chinese culture that was destroyed in the past years. I feel honoured to bring truthfulness and compassion to the whole world via the form of arts.
Photos courtesy of Shen Yun Performing Arts
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