SYDNEY, Australia—John Massard, a school principal, saw The Spectacular with his wife on April 5 at the Sydney Entertainment Centre.
Mr Massard said he had been keen to see the show in order to understand his Chinese students better. He said he had also been recommended by a number of teachers from his school to see the show as it was important for everyone to understand where the students "are from and what belief they have."
Mr Massard had only positive things to say about the show.
"The show was spectacular, the dancers were all very, very graceful I don't know how many you have in the whole team but certainly very talented dancers and singers there."
"The 'Nymphs of the Sea' and 'Water Sleeves' were fantastic—they stood out. I am a bit of the rhythm person so I liked the drummers. I thought it was excellent."
Mr Massard said there were a few key words that stuck out for him in appraising the show.
"If I had to make a comment about the performance tonight the word that stuck to me through the whole thing is grace, the gracefulness of the dancers, the elegance of the whole thing."
"The costumes were superb, and the other word that comes to mind is the values.
"What I see is that our values whether you are an Australian or an Australian Chinese person or from overseas from lots of different countries, our values are very similar and that is one thing that connect us together and is very important to us."
Mr Masson said each performance varied but still carried the values through each one.
"You can feel the values in the performance and you cannot leave out the singers either, because the first lady, the soprano, she was just awesome. And the values that were in the song that she sang, you could feel. That was good to have the words up on the screen, you could feel what they were singing about and you could feel the emotion.
"To the singers the words in the songs... they are cross-cultural. They are things that are really important—not just for the Chinese but for the Australians.
"Elegant, and I still stay with the word, 'values', because you can feel them, you can hear them and you can see them."
Mr Masson said he liked all the performances and noted how they varied in tone, with some more lighthearted and others more values focused.
"The ones that are supposed to be calming are serene like the sea, the water and the ones that are a little bit more heartfelt like the Lotus blossom [The Risen Lotus Flower] you can still feel the values in what they are saying.
As for his favourite performance, he said "To pick one it would be to hard, you could not go past the three singers just because they were brilliant singers. You could not go past the drumming [Drummers of the Tang Court] because I really like that sort of drumming or the chopstick one [Chopstick Zest]."
Mr Masson said he appreciated the narration in English and Chinese as it helped to understand the "intricacies" of the show.
He also noted the contemporary use of technology.
"I also I liked the animation at the back—that also adds to it—and sets the scene. Again the 'Nymphs of the Sea' was particularly true, but the one where the gentleman shot the suns, the animation is really a bit lucid as well.
"They way you use technology at the back...I think that makes it a little bit more special even because is ancient China with modern China with modern technology all at the same time".
For information about upcoming Divine Performing Arts shows, please visit:
www.BestChineseShows.com.
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