Audience viewing DPA in the Place des Arts, Montreal. (Mu Feng/The Epoch Times)

MONTREAL--What entices someone back every year for the Chinese New Year Spectacular?
Former dancer, Ms. Fabian, responds: "Every year they are getting better. It's very nice but higher level ... and the costumes are beautiful, and the music, and everything. It's a real, real event in Montreal, the Chinese New Year Spectacular. It's spectacular, for sure."

Ms. Fabian attended the show at the Place des Arts on Friday Jan. 16 and reflected on the deeper meaning of the show's essence.

Divine Performing Arts has a purpose infused into their productions: they want to restore traditional Chinese culture and values, and share it with people all over the world.

Ms. Fabian said, "Chinese values? The thing is, that everybody has Chinese values in a way, because Chinese culture, it's more than 6,000 years [old] so it's kind of a cradle of humanity, everybody has something from the Chinese culture. Besides my ancestors--I'm of Hungarian origin--so Hungarians came from middle Asia, next to Mongolia, from that part of the world. So in a way we are somehow connected, even though it was many, many years ago, but humanity got quite some things from the Chinese culture, like china, gunpowder ... paper, things which the Chinese people and Chinese culture gave to humanity, to the world."

She saw the Chinese characteristic of respecting one's elders demonstrated in the story of Mulan. "Oh, yes, that was the story of the girl who plays the role of a boy to save her father. The Mulan story [Mulan Joins the Battle] ... it shows the respect of children to their parents, which is a good thing to promulgate.

"Because nowadays unfortunately a lot of youngsters are not very respectful toward their parents or toward the elderly, which in Chinese culture and usually in Asian culture, it's respect for parents and for the grandparents and your elders. Which should be in Western society, because basically our parents gave us what we have and made us what we are, so we should appreciate them and we should thank them. And one way to thank them is to take care of them when they're old."

The coordination between the dancing and the music also impressed Ms. Fabian. "It was very good! The best dance I liked was the Tibetan dance [Dance of the Snow-Capped Mountain]. It was technically 100 percent, the unison to the beat. When there are more people on stage its very important to do every move at the same time, and with this Tibetan dance it was absolutely perfect, absolutely perfect," she said. "That's what I found!"

Divine Performing Arts will perform three more shows in Montreal's Place des Arts this weekend. Saturday January 17, at 2:30pm and 7:30pm, and Sunday January 18 at 2:30pm. Please see DivinePerformingArts.org for more information.