To release the stress arising from recently hard work, I attempted to enjoy a wonderful weekend with my families at Costa Hall at Geelong last weekend. However, it virtually did not turn out as I wished.
The two-hour performance "spectacular", as the organisers marketed it, is supposedly a highly decent showcase of ancient Chinese culture performed by the top level Chinese artists. I thought it would be great, even though, for the kids, it would be something completely different from what they usually have seen. Instead, my families and I were exposed to a mediocre exhibition with a very strong political slant.
How we long to see the "bearing" and "form" of Chinese classical dance, the flowing heeltoe, flat-footed walk, the elegant arm dancing, and the jumping and tumbling at which the Chinese excel.
But all we have seen was a so-so series of dance routines, singers with voices like bags of gravel. The truly weird dance-drama performed by people who were beaten by heavies wearing jackets with appliquéd hammer and sickles. Dozen or so dances were interspersed with awful faux-operatic singers in modern ball gowns and tuxedos, who extremely annoying sang hymns praising Falun Gong and how it had lifted them above life's trials and tribulations. One such song featured the words "Dafa is good" every other line, which gave the feeling of being brainwashed.
My wife could not stop shake her head and question me: is this your art of the Orient?
At that time I felt that I have been hoodwinked into buying tickets for a show that promised "5000 years of Chinese History" when it was nothing of the sort.
But I believed we were relatively moderate comparing to other audiences that night, many just walked away whenever there were words like, persecutions and torture...The whole mood was ruined. I think they may have the same feeling as me - ripped off and disgusted, because we did not see what we had paid to see - ancient Chinese culture as the brochures bill. If the Brochures do not hide that attempt, I think I would not take the kids to such a pageant-style show to hear about Falun Gong.
Actually I don't know about Falun Gong, all the criticism of the show is not an attack on Falun Gong, but an attack on the underhanded way in which they tricked people into watching their demonstration. If anything, this show will make people LESS sympathetic to their cause. No one likes to be ripped off! What next, Scientology the Musical?
I am really sorry to my family. My daughter said she would hardly take my recommendation in the future.
Original text from: http://piershildebrand.blogsome.com/
