Hayes, with nearly 30 years as a dance educator in a Texas public school and then as the director of a performing arts group, said Shen Yun was spectacular.

“The dance is spectacular. They’re beautifully trained, you can tell that … everything that they were doing was lovely,” Hayes said. “There was lovely attention to detail. [It] was just an all-around fabulous performance.”

The former dance educator trained in ballet remarked how fluid, effortless, and synchronized, dancers’ movements were. “It’s part of their breath, it’s part of their movement, there is no disconnect,” she said. “It’s lovely to watch.”

“I loved the flow of the soloist to the ensemble, back and forth. The storytelling was lovely … it was very sweet and honest, and it was inspirational.

“There was a message,” she added. “It inspires us to think beautiful thoughts, it inspired us to think higher. [We should go] beyond modern times and think of the beauty of the world.

“I feel the spirituality came very much through. I saw the beauty of the country, dances, and the legends. That’s what really touched my heart.

“I felt like I was seeing kindred souls—because I was an artist myself. I was seeing artists on stages, I was seeing them in the moments of joy, in the moments of sadness. I just love the way they spoke to me,” she said.

The destruction of traditional Chinese culture by the Chinese Communist Party saddened Hayes.

“As very conservative persons here in the United States, we are struggling. We are in the same kind of spiritual war right now. One of the messages … throughout, was to look past these modern thoughts, and to go back to the divine, and to think about what is true artistry … what beauty is in movement, what beauty is in the experience of song and [musicality].”

With the experienced eye of a dancer, Hayes extolled Shen Yun’s costumes—the spectacular, vibrant colors—and the way color was used to create experiences throughout the performance.