Shen Yun

Ben surprised me with tickets to go see it yesterday at the Neal Blaisdell Concert Hall in downtown Honolulu. Shen Yun Performing Arts "consist primarily if vocal music and dance. The company gains its creative inspiration from traditional Chinese culture, and seeks to further this heritage." (from the program).

It was really good-there were three singers that came out and sang with a piano accompaniment. But most of it was dance-beautiful, breathtaking dances with amazing costumes and lots of acrobatics and tumbling. There was one woman who played a Chinese instrument called a erhu-it's a stringed instrument, but it only has two strings. To me, it was the most amazing part of the production. The sounds that this two stringed instrument can make is amazing.

Then there were two scenes that had me going '...what??' In the middle of these gorgeous traditional dances, there were two scenes that take place in modern China, and both dealt with the persecution of people who practice a religion or teaching or something called Falun Dafa (they never really explain what it is-maybe Chinese people know, but I'm drawing a blank). I get what they were trying to say, but both dances seemed very out of place among all the traditional/myth/legend dances they were doing. In all honesty, I could have done without them and would have preferred to see more tumbling or drumming or something equally cool.

Afterwards, Ben and I went to PF Changs because Chinese food sounded really good. So all in all, it was a really good day.

Today we're focusing on cleaning our aparment because Leah is coming to visit us for a few days, which will be awesome. And then we'll be in Seattle at the beginning of July (YAY!!!!!!).