(Clearwisdom.net) On January 23-24, NTDTV presented four shows of the Chinese New Year Spectacular at the Merriam Theater in Philadelphia. Nearly 7000 residents from the greater Philadelphia area watched the show. The audience enjoyed authentic Chinese culture conveyed by the show, and left overwhelmingly positive feedback.
Before the Show, more than thirty mainstream media outlets, including six TV channels (NBC10, CN8, FOX29, ABC6, WYBE, and WHYY), WCOJ-AM Radio and more than twenty newspapers (The Inquirer, Philadelphia City Paper, Philadelphia Weekly, Courier Post, Metro, Philadelphia Tribune, The Bulletin, IMPACTO, EL TIEMP, Play Magazine, Public Record, News of Delaware County, Delaware County Daily News, Daily Local News, NEWSPOST (Korean), CITRA (Indonesian), World Daily (Chinese), the Epoch Times (Chinese and English), etc) covered the show. According to the organizers, more than 10 million copies of Spectacular advertisements and articles were printed by these newspapers. In Philadelphia, almost everyone learned about news about the show. Below are some excerpts of media reports.
New Jersey Courier-Post: Ring in Chinese New Year-Philadelphia's 'Spectacular' Celebrates Traditional Values, Myths
For the Chen family of Sicklerville, the Chinese New Year Spectacular coming to the Merriam Theater later this month is a familiar affair.
Rutang Chen directs the orchestra for the tour's East Coast swing. His wife, Ningfang, plays flute. Their children are also involved, with daughter Ying working as stage manager and son, Gang, playing bassoon.
"The audience loves an orchestra," said Chen Gang, 35, "And I love music."
Tradition Comes to Life
This year, the show visits 29 cities around the world, including Philadelphia and 14 others in North America. The closest it came to the area last year was Wilmington, Del.
Shows sponsored by the Greater Philadelphia Asian Culture Center and the Delaware Asian Culture Center, are set for 7:30 p.m. Jan. 23 and 24.
[...]
"...New year Spectacular features traditional Chinese performing arts, including costumes, dancing and music." said Dr. Jingduan Yang, of Hainesport, who chairs the culture center.
"The shows ... are a chance for Chinese to reconnect with their culture roots. But Westerners will also understand the traditional values like truthfulness, kindness and tolerance that are depicted."
Courier-Post carried an article to introduce the Show
Philadelphia City Paper-Arts Agenda Picks: Just do it: Chinese New Year Spectacular
Jan 16, 2007Obscured by modernization and nearly destroyed by the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Chinese cultural traditions are largely unknown to the children of immigrants. So when New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV) formed in 2002, its organizers hoped to wipe the dust off 5,000 years of cultural history.
NTDTV's Chinese New Year Spectacular showcases original works sampling the depth and variety of classical Chinese arts. Inspired by the opulent detail and rich coloring of traditional Chinese court wear, the dancers in "Flying Goddesses" move in silky costumes amidst plumes of dry ice. Original songs written as lithe Chinese folk tunes and sung in Chinese are performed in the Western operatic tradition. Similarly, two of the dance pieces (based on the stories of warriors Fa Mulan and Yue Fei) split the audience's attention between a flowing choreography borrowing from martial arts and the full-bodied sound of a Western orchestra. Well, not entirely Western -- Tianyin Orchestra pairs its violins with bamboo flutes and other Chinese instruments to accentuate Asian pentatonic harmonies and melodies.
"[Chinese culture and the Chinese New Year are more than] just firecrackers and lion dances," says stage manager Ying Chen, whose father, Rutang Chen, is the production's conductor. "We are showing the spirit of the culture in performing arts."
The Spectacular's goal to promote cultural diversity has received ample support from local Philadelphians. Encouraged by the Greater Philadelphia Asian Culture Center, Councilwoman at-large Blondell Reynolds Brown is personally sponsoring 25 students to see the show.
Adds Chen, "The audience response is just amazing, from either the professor of Eastern literature at Stanford or just an average Chinese person. We tried to make a show about pure goodness [and] positive messages that make Chinese people proud of their culture."
Philadelphia Weekly: Paying the piper-Who'll foot the bill for city school kids to see a Chinese New Year celebration?
January 17, 2007
Philadelphia Weekly reported on the Spectacular
The little she's heard about Chinese New Year parties sounds melodic to 14-year-old singer and flutist Jeannette Eang of Olney.
"I know they give out red envelopes," says the Grover Washington Jr. Middle School eighth-grader. "they put money in them as a good luck charm for kids."
Jeannette and 42 other students from the B and Olney school's magna music program won't walk away with fattened wallets, but they will experience an authentic Chinese New Year celebration next Tuesday inside Broad Street's Merriam Theater.
Dubbed the Chinese New Year Spectacular and produced by New York City-based New Tang Dynasty TV, the extravaganza features some 200 ornately costumed singers, dancers and musicians enacting traditional Chinese myths and legends to ring in the year of the boar, which begins Feb. 18.
Many who've already witnessed the two-and-a-half-hour show--which is touring 29 cities (10 in the U.S.)--are raving about it.
[...]
Some traditional Chinese values involve spiritual concepts such as reincarnation and the belief in higher powers. Others are more earthbound--that what goes around, comes around, for example, and that people should be truthful, compassionate and tolerant.
These latter three virtues constitute the tenets of a popular exercise and meditation regimen known as Falun Gong that the Chinese Communists have used brutality to suppress since the late '90s. Perhaps not coincidentally, many of the show's performers and behind-the-scenes volunteers are Falun Gong practitioners.
"But the show isn't about proselytizing for Falun Gong," Yang emphasizes.
It is, though, about using entertainment to convey positive values.
"Good conquers evil," Yang says with a smile. "Kids understand when that message is delivered through the arts. It helps them understand the importance of treating each other nicely."
Metro Philadelphia: Chinese Celebration Comes to Town
Philadelphia one of 28 cities worldwide to host 'New Years Spectacular'
Jan. 23, 2007To Ying Chen, it's a rare chance for the world to see Chinese culture in all its many forms.
For thousands of spectators, the fourth annual Chinese New Year Spectacular is a traveling ancient world come to life.
The international show by New York City's New Tang Dynasty TV (NTDTV) is spending today and tomorrow in Philadelphia.
The Merriam Theater on South Broad Street will host four shows, part of a whirlwind performance touring 28 cities across the globe, bringing more than 200 singers, musicians and dancers together for what was rated as the seventh-largest show in the United States last year.
"It allows us to cherish our heritage and speak about the things we couldn't in China," Chen, of Winslow, N.J., said yesterday as she set up for today's performances.
Since becoming stage manager four years ago, Chen said the show and NTDTV have become important outlets for the often-masked Chinese history.
"China is under communist rule ... as a result the Chinese government only allows one voice in their country," Chen said. "NTDTV was founded by North-American Chinese and it's independent of any political influence. It now has the reputation of exposing and reporting on some of the sensitive issues like SARS and some of the religious persecution there."
The traveling performers will put on about 100 shows in 28 cities that organizers estimate will be seen live by 100,000 people. The shows will also be aired on NTDTV around the Chinese New Year on Feb. 18 and seen by another 200 million people.
Besides several American and Canadian cities, the show is scheduled to make stops in Paris, Berlin, Australia, Taiwan and Japan.
Metro Philadelphia Reported on the Show
The Inquirer
Weekend Edition of The Inquirer published a 3-page story to introduce the show
The Inquirer, the largest newspaper in Philadelphia, sponsored the show and published a 3-page story on the weekend before the show.
The Bulletin: A New Year, A New Beginning
01/23/2007
Philadelphia - When it began in 2004, New Tang Dynasty Television's NTDTV Chinese New Year Spectacular performed only seven shows in five cities worldwide. As popularity grew over the next two years, those numbers expanded to 25 shows in 17 cities, but Philadelphia was kept off the schedule.
Now, for the first time since its inception, the show rolls into Philly for a two-night stay at the Merriam Theater beginning tonight. Featuring over 200 performers, this year's theme is "Myths and Legends," which will convey life and arts during China's Tang Dynasty, considered to be the country's golden era of art and literature.
After the Chinese cultural revolution of the 1960s, much of the essence of the country's traditional values were lost. Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucianist themes were silenced by atheism and communism. "You wouldn't be able to see a show like this if you were living in China today," says Cindy Wang, publicist for NTDTV's event. "The way the government is run, many things would be censored and propaganda would be inserted everywhere."
The New Year Spectacular, sponsored by the Greater Philadelphia Asian Culture Center, looks to revive those lost values and traditions and restore the meaning of arguably the most important holiday on the Chinese calendar. "Normally, when Westerners think of the Chinese New Year, they imagine the traditional dragon dance," says Wang, "but Chinese culture goes well beyond that."
The show will transport audiences back to ancient China, during the days of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.) by way of high-tech sets, lavish dance numbers, large-scale projections, and soaring orchestrations. The choreography will once again be handled by Tia Zhang, whose work last year was inspired by the devastation caused to Indonesia and Bali by the tsunami of 2004. Also, the Tian Yin Orchestra will perform traditional and original pieces using instruments of ancient Chinese origin.
Despite being a celebrated Chinese holiday, the celebration is not exclusive to members of the Asian-American community. "Westerners make up a large part of our audience," says Wang. "I'd say the audience is easily 50-50."
The event will also feature matin��e performances on both days for students of all ages. Over 3,000 students from 30 area school are already expected to attend.
NTDTV's Chinese New Year Spectacular will run through tomorrow at the Merriam Theater. Ticket prices range from $20 to $65 and are available through Ticketmaster or the Merriam box office.
Korean Language Newspaper Newspost published a full-page story on the Chinese New Year Spectacular
On January 13, NEWPOST published a full-page story on the Spectacular
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