MELBOURNE, Australia—Carlos Barrocas and his wife, Janetta Barrocas, saw Shen Yun Performing Arts for the first time at the Palais Theatre on April 23, after which Mr. Barrocas remarked, “If this is the real China, then it needs to be seen.”

Mr. Barrocas is the director of Freezo, a company that manufactures soft serve ice cream. His wife is an accountant for the company.

Mrs. Barrocas concurred. “I like the humour, I like the funny side to it, it breaks the ice.”

“You feel the tradition and you feel the realness of the show, which is nice to see,” Mr. Barrocas also said, referring to the classical Chinese dance and the costumes.

“I just love that everything sort of flows,” Mrs. Barrocas said of the dancers. “The ladies all do it so beautifully together and the men as well. The men are so strong and powerful and the ladies are like delicate flowers.”

“It’s sad that you can’t live out your beliefs and you’re oppressed and held back,” Mr. Barrocas remarked after seeing the story-based dances that depict the persecution. “I think that’s why the show is making such big headways and big headlines is because people want to see this. They want to know what’s really going on. And it is saddening for us, we’re Christians and we believe that if that’s their faith, then that’s what they should be able to live out, for sure.”

Abhay Gupta, who is a doctor at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, together with his sister, surprised his parents with tickets to see Shen Yun this year.

Dipika Gupta, his mother, shared: “We booked ourselves, me and my husband, about two years ago. Unfortunately, because of COVID it didn’t [happen] and we were very sad, super sad. This year, our kids, my son and my daughter bought the tickets and they didn’t tell us, it’s a surprise gift for us.”

“The whole family is here and we just thoroughly, thoroughly, enjoyed it,” she said. “Absolutely beautiful. The culture, the costume, music, orchestra, my god, it’s just amazing. It’s just beautiful.”

“I thoroughly enjoyed the music,” she added. “[The music] was fluid, it was just amazing. The atmosphere was awesome, it was just beautiful.”

Her son, Mr. Gupta, remarked, “The music works so perfectly with all the pieces. It’s very impressive.”

“Everyone was perfectly coordinated,” he said of the dancers.

He also noted that hope was a key message he felt during the performance. He said that during certain story-based dances, “[i]t’s really important to see that sometimes when the struggles came, that the communities work together.”

Spiritual cultivation practices, including Buddhism and Taoism, were central to Chinese society for thousands of years. People abided by principles such as benevolence and justice, and propriety and wisdom. They paid respect to the heavens and credited aspects of the Chinese culture, including music, medicine, couture, and more, to the divine.

“That was a great message there,” he said.