SEATTLE—Actor Tom Ricciardelli usually finds himself on the other side of the curtain—or screen in his case—but after seeing Shen Yun Performing Arts at Seattle’s Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, he felt that any place in the audience was the best seat in the house.

“It was pretty awesome,” he said on April 4. He came to the performance as part of a birthday present for his wife.

Mr. Ricciardelli was most impressed by the pace of each Shen Yun piece. “So at some ballets the dances are long and opera scenes are long sometimes. These were great scenes, but they moved,” he said. “So they went from scene to scene; there must have been 20 different scenes, but each one was different.”

And he also appreciated the array of stories told through Shen Yun’s portrayal of China’s 5,000 years of dynastic history. “But the stories—the humor in the stories—there were sentimental ones, humorous ones, and there were violent ones,” he said. “But the scenes had statements with meaning, and I liked it.”

Through music and dance, Shen Yun travels the world, bringing traditional Chinese culture to millions. “Its stunning beauty and tremendous energy leave audiences uplifted and inspired,” reads Shen Yun’s website.

But another aspect that Mr. Ricciardelli paid special note to was Shen Yun’s state-of-the-art digital backdrop, which extends the stage and moves the audience to a world where heaven and earth are one.

“I loved the actual screens in the back and the technology of when they entered the screen and flew to different places and flew back,” he said.

Mr. Ricciardelli said that he and his wife will be sure to see another Shen Yun performance in the future. And considering Shen Yun’s emphasis on the spirit of mankind, he felt that Shen Yun had it just right when he described the performance as “neat, heart-felt, thought out storylines that weren’t preachy but had deep meaning.”

Shen Yun’s overall message contained profound inner meaning for Mr. Ricciardelli. “Because there is a time when we’re going to expire on this earth, so life on this earth isn’t everything,” he said. “So the thing is about how to be good to your fellow man and to also believe there’s a place of greatness and reward for those who do right.”

Reporting by David Yang and Michael Fitzgerald