SAN FRANCISCO—Margot Rudell, a former ballet dancer with the North Carolina State Ballet, experienced Shen Yun Performing Arts at the War Memorial Opera House on Jan. 5, 2020.

“I’m not sure that my body could achieve [what the Shen Yun dancers do],” Rudell said. “So I think that it’s really exciting that they can do it, and perhaps something in the mindset enables them to do extraordinary things also, with their dancing and their movement. It is extraordinarily beautiful and makes me feel very joyful to hear the music and see the beautiful colors and see the beautiful movement. Very enlightening.”

“Really beautiful dancing,” she said. “Wonderful expression … the way they use their arms, their heads, their shoulders, their hands, their faces. I think that the facial expressions are also so important, and I think that in Western dancing, that gets lost. And so I think that they’re really expressing with their whole bodies; and just the expansiveness of the dancing is very beautiful, and you really feel reaching out to eternity through their movements, and that’s really wonderful.”

While watching Shen Yun, she felt “happy and joyful and inspired and uplifted, and full of life and full of appreciation.”

She admired a Shen Yun dance piece called “Water Sleeves,” in which female dancers wear long, flowing sleeves.

“Wonderful music,” said Rudell. “I love the integration of the classical Chinese instruments with the classical Western instruments. They’re, I think, even more beautiful together.”

Rudell, who described herself as a dancer, musician, visual artist, poet, and singer, found Shen Yun’s music “very beautiful and very uplifting.”

“I loved the two-stringed instrument [erhu],” she said. “It was very moving. It was wonderful.”

She loved the way the backdrop was able to “create a feeling of heavenliness and add to the magical quality.”

Shen Yun was founded in New York with the mission of reviving China’s authentic traditional culture. This culture was nearly destroyed by the Chinese communist regime through several decades of systematic political campaigns.

The regime’s tactics also include spreading false propaganda about Shen Yun.

“Everyone knows that [the Chinese communist regime] has traditionally frowned on any religious belief or any religious practice or anything that smacks of organized anything outside the Communist Party,” she said. “And so this is not news to anyone and should not be shocking—whatever your religious beliefs are, almost every religion promotes compassion, and so I think if they knew what it was, they would not be afraid of it. ... They would be missing out if they don’t come, on beautiful music, costumes, colors, choreography, dancing … everything.”

In the performance, she saw the principles of compassion, integrity, and acceptance.

“I also denounce intolerance and would promote the ideas of compassion,” she said. “Anything that brings people to having more compassion and more integrity, I think, is a good thing.”

“I loved [the storytelling and spirituality], and I noticed that some of my friends and family are afraid to come because they’re afraid of something. I don’t know of what,” Rudell said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. There’s nothing wrong in my mind with compassion, goodness, integrity. These are all values that I hold dear also, and so I don’t know why anyone would be afraid of that. … If you open yourself to goodness and compassion and those things, I think that’s a good thing.”

She wants to share the beauty of Shen Yun with people she knows.

“I’d invite them to come see it with me. I’d buy them a ticket to come and see it with me because it’s really beautiful and wonderful,” she said.

“Something that I hope to see when I go see an artistic performance is a quality of magic, of the eternal, something beautiful that will stick with me for the rest of my life and bring joy, and I think this is in that category,” she said. “I think I will remember this performance as something very beautiful.”