Epoch Times Staff on Assignment in New York City

February 15, 2007

(Clearwisdom.net) There is nothing like the applause of thrilled children, and that is exactly what filled the room at today's Chinese New Year Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall.

Dorothy Dowling chaperoned a group of 75 young students from Medgar Evers College, a prep school in New York. She described the show as "Phenomenal," while her students opted for "Cool" to explain what they thought. Ms. Dowling said, "I love the backgrounds, the costumes are fabulous, and the scenes of heaven and even the one scene of hell are really moving."

Today's matinée was slightly delayed as bus loads of children and elderly groups were held up by the leftovers of yesterday's storm. After the wait, anticipation was high when the curtain came up, but as soon as a scene of angelic dancers was fully revealed, the melodies of the orchestra replaced the restless sounds of stirring as everyone watched what turned out to be a thoroughly unique show.

With good guys and bad guys, the innocent and the glorious, the more than one hundred dancers on stage had such depth to each of their characters in all of the performances. It seemed like they truly believed they were a part of those ancient or celestial settings depicted on the enormous LED screen behind them.

Perseverance and the overcoming of great obstacles was a theme in quite a few dances and songs, which is quite fitting considering all the hardships that New Tang Dynasty Television (the producer of the show) had to face in putting on this show.

NTDTV is bringing the beauty of traditional Chinese culture and the festivity of the Chinese New Year to busy New Yorkers. Unfortunately, the Chinese regime opposes what NTDTV is doing with this show. Chinese officials have even gone so far as to harass theaters and sponsors of The Chinese New Year Spectacular.

"Ever since it entered into China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has wanted to wipe out Chinese traditional belief systems and replace them with Marxist and Maoist ideology. They're out to destroy a lot of things that are actually quite good... I think the CCP is really upset because this year's show is more than good -- it's great," said NTDTV Senior Vice President Samuel Zhou.

Indeed performances by Falun Gong practitioners and dances with deep spiritual messages are not something that the atheistic regime has promoted among the Chinese population.

Despite the efforts of the Chinese Consulate, the audience at Radio City seemed to genuinely enjoy everything about the Spectacular.

"We all loved the show. Happy Chinese New Year! It is our first time to see this and we will see it again," said Tiffany, Tyrone and Gregory from New York's IS 229 high school.

Their parent coordinator Ms. Turner said that she loved the movement, the dance and the message behind it. "We cannot go to China to learn about the culture. We learned a lot about Chinese culture through this show."

"The show is very good, we learned a lot of good things and it had a lot of good meanings," said Mr. Narayandas Chowdhry, visiting New York with his wife Jyoti. The couple was from Mumbai, India.

"The deeper meaning behind the songs was amazing," said Jyoti, quoting a line from one of the musical solos.

"As the moments pass, that moment does not come back; that's what I remember," she said.

All together the show is rolling on to delighted applause as it plays through until Saturday.