(Clearwisdom.net) The Divine Performing Arts (DPA) performed two shows at the Boston Opera House in Boston, Massachusetts on Jan. 10, 2009. Both shows played to a full house. The audience was deeply moved by this world-class presentation and showered their highest praise on the show.

A full house watches attentively

A full house watches attentively

"It's Beautiful! I Haven't Seen Anything Like It!"

Mary Berry, a librarian who lives in Jamestown, Rhode Island attended the DPA with her Mother.

The reporter noted that it was a fair distance from Jamestown to Boston, to which she replied, "I come to Boston a lot and my Mother told me about this show, so I came up to see it."

When asked what she thought of the show, Mary's mother said, "Oh it's beautiful. Really. After I saw it on a monitor screen in a store downtown, it's beautiful! I haven't seen anything like it!" She particularly liked the colors, costumes, and dance movements.

Ms. Berry's was very intrigued with the history and culture of China, saying, "I think the history was beautiful, too. I am learning a lot about the history of China that I didn't know. I like the way the stories were told through dance because I learned a lot about the dance and movements and the meanings just from watching it. Now I can read a story from watching people dance!"

The Dances Were "Tugging at the Heart"

Ms. Berry particularly liked watching the dancer's arm movements, saying that they were able to express such a wide range of emotions in even the simplest gestures. "When we were watching the dance, just the arm movements--they were so dramatic--like in one of the men's tales, when his wife wanted to sleep in his arms, and you can feel the despair and the heartfelt feelings, just from the arm movements or the expressions, or the dance. Just in the dances, you knew it was tugging at the heart, and they were joyful and they were leaping on the stage, it was just great. It was beautiful!"

When Ms. Berry was asked if the components of the show were unique to Chinese dance, she replied, "I think so. When I look at classical Chinese dance, I see that a lot of modern dance that is taken from classical Chinese dance. You can see the progression in modern dance today, and I can see where it came from now. I think everyone learned."

"It Was Very Moving. I Loved the Stories!"

Mrs. Swiston, a pre-school teacher in a Chinese language school came to the show with her daughter and several of her students.

"We came to the evening show and I didn't realize it was so long. It was like 9:00 p.m. and it was intermission, and I said, "Ah, I think we have to go home." But my daughter said, "But Mommy, I want to stay for the whole thing!'

"Actually, I have a couple of my students here. Because we were shopping and I had run into a couple of people in costumes and my students asked me, 'What do you know about that show?' And Gala, my daughter was sitting there and she said, 'It's a really good show, Mom!' It's beautiful. It's really beautiful. Yeah. It was a beautiful show. It was artistic. I think it was very moving. I loved the stories!"

Gala said, "I loved the Mulan story ["Mulan Joins the Battle"] and the drumming."

Mrs. Swiston added, "Yeah, the drumming dance was very nice. It's really nice to see all the traditional stories. I love telling these kinds of legendary stories and I think it's great for the kids. I just love those stories, and I love to see the dance, they are so expressive. They're so amazing that I was just saying to another lady, 'You could see the elderly and the way they carry themselves, it is so expressive.' It was beautiful, absolutely beautiful."

Referring to the "Flowing Sleeves" dance, she said, "They make it look so easy. They just swing their long sleeves and it becomes this beautiful arc. I'm telling you, [when I try those movements] I get so tangled up that I forget what I am doing! Truly it takes talent, a proper flick of the wrist or something, but I can't do it. It's so elegant. I think that was one of the beautiful things I liked about the show, is that these women are so petite, right, but you can tell that they are so strong. It's like they stick a foot in the air and hold it for a while. You can see the strength and they are so tiny. Of course, Gala loved the little girl in one of the dances. It was very nice, it was a great story."

When asked about the message that she would take away from the show, she replied, "I guess that is the other thing that I think was really beautiful about this performance. It's that I understand the message that is trying to be conveyed, and I think that that is the most beautiful way to convey the message: that with all of this discipline; with all of this spirituality, this is what you produce, this is the beautiful thing you produce. I think that resonates a lot with me so I really liked that. It's beautiful, very beautiful."

Mrs. Swiston thought the show was "historical," saying "The history that it teaches, I think is really important. This is a great way of spreading something this big. This is cool. Really cool."

When she is teaching her pre-school classes, she teaches a lot about Chinese legends and stories. "I told my students here today, the show is like Chinese mythology. The Greeks have Greek mythology and the Chinese have Chinese mythology. We tell the story about the Jade Emperor and all his sons, and all the deities, and the heavenly bodies that are up there. To me that's culture, it's history ... I love it. Personally I love it."

"It Was Amazing, the Costumes, the Music, It Was Fabulous!"

Lee Gordon owns an Investment Finance Banking firm that specializes in mergers and acquisitions.

He said he learned about the show from a brochure he picked up at a Chinese restaurant. His daughter is learning about Chinese culture at her school and "as soon as I told her about the show she wanted to come." "My daughter [already] wants to know when we're coming back!"

"Yes, I liked it very much. I really liked the show and I really liked the costumes. I liked the drums and liked them all," she said.

Mr. Gordon continued, "It was amazing, the costumes, the music--just amazing!"