(Clearwisdom.net) On February 8, 2008, the second day after Chinese New Year, the Divine Performing Arts' Chinese New Year Splendor continued its run at Radio City Music Hall to large, enthusiastic audiences..
After seeing the show, New Yorker Micheal Faherty carefully filled out a questionnaire about the show. This was the third time that he had seen the Divine Performing Arts' New Year show. He said, "I live on Orchard Street, which has become a part of Chinatown. It is hard to not be influenced by the Chinese culture if you live there. Normally, three nights each year, the firecrackers and lion dances will tell you that Chinese New Year is here. If you missed the first day, there still are two more days to enjoy."
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Mr. Faherty is a fire safety director, but he is also an artist. He said with a smile, "This year's show, no matter whether it was the first half or the second half, was full of meaningful content. I think it was very interesting. There was serious stuff, but the color of the whole performance, especially the colors of the girls' costumes--pink, light green or yellow, pale blue, etc., these colors combined together to soothe people. [Each performance] was like moving paintings. A painting only has two dimensions. But this show's choreographer turned flat paintings into three-dimensional moving pictures."
As an artist, Faherty used to work for the New York Museum of Contemporary Arts. He really wanted to comment on the scenery of the Splendor, based on his love for visual arts. He said, "I loved the scenery. At the beginning of the dance, 'The Fruits of Goodness,' when the two young men entered the temple, the scenery showed that the temple was very old and damaged. But later, when they fell asleep, the temple went back to a time when it was in its best condition: elegant and holy. It was so interesting, and expressing it through the theater arts is phenomenal."
"In 'The Lady of the Moon,' the crow turned into suns that were then shot down one by one,. It was so interesting. My favorite, though, was the fan technique in 'Nymphs of the Sea.' It was not just the use of the fans, but those fans had challises on them to represent waves. What an interesting technique! I have never seen that before, and they are an inspiration for my painting."
Mr. Faherty, who is Irish, said he saw so many audience members of different ethnicities, and that it was clear that it was not only Asians who were drawn to the Divine Performing Arts' performances. A theme he sensed throughout the show was, "Keep an open mind. Keep an open mind and use this mindset in the coming year." He added, "I hope to see the Chinese New Year show every year."
