While attending a Divine Performing Arts show, you”™re not only promised two hours of moving art; you”™re promised a lesson in Chinese culture.
“Each dance piece has its own meaning,” said Cecilia Xiong, dancer with the Divine Performing Arts (DPA). Xiong, who has been dancing since she was a child, fell in love with the art after performing a lotus dance. The lotus flower in Chinese culture represents purity and pure heart. She said that within Chinese dance “there are always stories telling passion and morality.”
Xiong, 29, was born in Wuhan, China. She said morality and truth are very important aspects of Chinese culture that she strives to illustrate through her dancing. She has achieved this, by practicing a form of Chinese meditation, Falun Dafa (also called Falun Gong). The principle has been in China for 5,000 years and preaches truth, compassion and tolerance. It is repressed in China.
“I”™ve been a practitioner of Falun Dafa since 1998,” said Xiong. “Falun Dafa for me changed my mentality, changed my life because to be a person you have to be truthful, compassionate and tolerant, the three principles of Falun Dafa. So it really influences my dancing because I think with dancing it”™s not just movement between the movements; there”™s something tangible to express. Especially with Chinese classical dance there”™s so much meaning behind it.”
Fairfield, Conn., resident Elisabeth Reynolds, 25, is a violinist for the DPA, and an advocate for Falun Dafa which was introduced to her during her junior year at Brown University.
“At first I said, well it”™s Chinese, it sounds very foreign to me, but I tried it and I just found, compared to other mediation I have done in the past, it was so different. It really struck me. I was doing the meditation and I could really feel it working, you feel your thoughts calm down,” she said.
