MONTREAL, Que.—The beautiful city of Montreal is anticipating the arrival of Shen Yun Performing Arts from April 9 through 13 at the Place des Arts in the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier.

Since 2006, theatergoers have loved the positive message and great entertainment that Shen Yun presented, and over the past few years, Montreal has joined audiences around the world in their applause.

Blair McIntosh, an entrepreneur and CEO of Motrec, a global industrial electric vehicle company, said, “It is quite fascinating the discipline that goes into all this. It is mind-boggling.”

Shen Yun’s mission statement is to revive traditional Chinese culture before communism and share it with the world.

“I just hope they will continue to travel all over the world and spread the message,” Mr. McIntosh said. “And provide people not only with entertainment, but also education.”

“I’ve been wanting to see Shen Yun for years and I’m moved. I’m moved because what I liked most, beyond the art, was the transparency of the human rights and the current situation that continues to exist, and [its inclusion by Shen Yun] to share it with us,” said Emilie Sauvage, a former dancer, actor, and model, who attended Shen Yun in 2023.

“I feel a little bit of sadness because it’s a lot of history that has been repressed by China. It’s 5,000 years of history that has been stopped. It’s very touching,” said Benjamin Monrose, owner of a taekwondo academy. “We want to see more.”

Traditional Chinese culture is said to be divinely inspired, and actor and director Roumen Petkov said he could feel that divine aspect.

“There is a term: ‘deus ex machina.’ That’s the divine, the divine that always comes to participate in people’s lives,” he said.

Mr. Petkov added, “We become better because we see something that touches the human mind that is really more important than the material values.”

Raushana Asylbekova, a former choreographer of classical ballet in Russia, said she was moved by the story in 2019, “Goodness in the Face of Evil,” which depicts a network of prisons in modern-day China reminiscent of Soviet gulags, which is used in the persecution of religious and spiritual people by the communist regime.

“I was almost crying,” Ms. Asylbekova said. “It is very brave to retell such a story, because in China it’s impossible [to freely depict this] really. I’m from Russia, I’m from the ex-Soviet Union. We had major things, similar, but not to this point, however.”

Glynis Poole, a former actor and drama teacher attended the Jan. 2, 2020 performance.

“I love the fact that sometimes it’s just the beauty in the visual, and other times it’s really making a very important point about the politics in China today, but also ancient stories. The sheer spectacle of it, and the athleticism of the dancers, was really quite amazing,” she said.

When she attended Shen Yun in 2019, oil painter Verona Sorensen was touched by a dance set in the Tang dynasty. She added that there are more components of Shen Yun’s surface than the visual, and that these components all work together to create a stirring feeling.

“I just remember being very, very moved and feeling, ‘Wow, I haven’t been this affected by visuals to the point of bringing up emotions,’” Ms. Sorensen said.

Ethnic dances featured in Shen Yun’s performance drew the approval of others in the Montreal audience.

Yoana Petkova, a piano teacher who also practices traditional Bulgarian dance, said, “The colors with the music and the movements, it touched me. I wasn’t expecting it, it really touched me, it was really pretty.”

In 2019 Canadian musician Laurence Jalbert was entranced by Shen Yun’s soprano soloist.

“It’s the voices that fascinate me. But this kind of voice, there expressly for this kind of song that, too, has always fascinated me. [The soprano’s voice] is very, very, very high. So when she goes up very very high, she’s really a voice-acrobat. It’s a very particular tone of voice that is appropriate for this type of singing, a voice magnificently on note and beautiful,” she said.

“Frankly, everything. I don’t know where to start and where to end! I really have goosebumps, I loved it,” she said. “I don’t want to tell you that I liked one and not say that I liked the other one. I liked them all!”