CANBERRA, Australia—While the Divine Performing Arts Chinese Spectacular is the largest stage show traveling the world dedicated to Chinese culture, it also attracts people from many other different cultures.
Nasreen Hafesjee and her young daughter, Shireen, were in attendance at the final Canberra performance. Nasreen said: "I thought it was brilliant. Very, very thoroughly done. I was very impressed. You don't get to see many performances like this."
She thought it was hard to pick her favourite part, and with good reason: "There were so many dances, and there were good things in all of them. The costumes were fantastic, and I thought the dancers were very, very graceful. And that's another thing which you don't get to see everywhere. You have some dancers which are graceful in a group, and others might not be, but in this one I noticed that everyone was very graceful. And I loved the costumes."
She felt the costumes in the Spectacular were a refreshing change from those used in other performing arts shows depicting contemporary themes: "Nowadays you get costumes where—I don't know how to say this—I mean, you have much more revealing costumes around."
Nasreen also felt that the performance gave an orthodox portrayal of masculine and feminine characteristics: "It struck me that this [the Spectacular] was very feminine, the women were dressed in a very feminine way, and the men very masculine, and that, to me I loved that.
"You know, men should look like men and dance like men, and the women are petite, and graceful and beautiful. And I thought that was beautiful, you know, the costumes also reflected that."
She had the feeling that these ideas were being transmitted from ancient China. "And also the music and the meanings, you know. And I also liked the backgrounds, that was very well done."
Her young daughter Shireen did not have a favourite performance—when asked, she said: "No, I liked all of it! I liked the one with the fans ['Lightness and Grace']"
Nasreen also appreciated the Erhu piece "… that was very nice, very melodious. I had not actually seen that before, I thought that was wonderful. The piano also, you know, the woman who played the piano, great."
When asked what she would remember of the show, Nasreen said it would be "the colour and the grace, the music, the gentleness of everything. I think I'll remember that."
For information about upcoming Divine Performing Arts shows, please visit:
www.bestchineseshows.com
The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of the Chinese Spectacular. For our complete coverage please visit:
http://en.epochtimes.com/features/dpa2008/
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