Spectacular a 'Celebration of Being in a Group and Doing Things Together'

A Chinese friend told Leonardo Galavis and Fluer Prinsen about the Chinese New Year Spectacular coming to Toronto's Sony Centre this weekend, and the two graduate students were delighted that they attended the show.

Galavis is originally from Colombia, and Prinsen from the Netherlands. Now living in Toronto, one is in an MBA program in Toronto, and the other is studying for a Ph.D. degree.

"It was beautiful. I liked it a lot," said Galavis after watching the show.

Posters he had seen of the Spectacular caught his interest.

"I was actually very much looking forward to coming and seeing everything because I had seen the different posters. I guess the colours, that is why I wanted to come and see the colours, the movements, all that."

For Prinsen, it was the dancing that attracted her the most. "I also read something about that, and I think it is very beautiful and intricate, all the small movements," she said.

"The costumes are really beautiful," she added.

Galavis found that the different sceneries projected onto the backdrop screen for each performance helped him learn about different aspects of Chinese culture. They showed traditional buildings, natural landscapes, and heavenly scenes.

"The scenes were about a different place each time," he said. For example, in one of the performances, which was about a dream experience in ancient China, he learned about "three religions which are the mainstream in China"—Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism.

He learned "a couple of words in Chinese too."

"Something that I thought really came out is that everything is in big groups and they are all synchronized; there is not a lot of individual performances," Prinsen noted.

She called the Chinese New Year Spectacular a "celebration of being in a group and doing things together."

"Very similar to Columbian culture where we all tend to do things as a group, as a whole, and not as an individual," added Galavis. "I guess that is something we have in common with the Chinese culture."

Are they planning on coming back next year?

"Of course, for the celebration!" they said.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of the Divine Performing Arts shows that will perform in over 60 cities worldwide in 2008. To find a show near you, please visit www.bestchineseshows.com.