“It’s so moving and beautiful. It’s touching. There were times when I felt like crying—so touching and so moving. And other times I felt so joyful, with the colors and the movement, and you can see the joy in the dancers, in the choreography, the music, and the singing.”

“It was just very, very spiritual and moving. A lot of history, very rich in history. It was everything and more than I expected.”

“I was expecting for sure beautiful music and dance and the costumes—I knew that would all be beautiful. I think that the history part and the spiritual part was much more than I had known about before, so that is very, very moving for me.”

“It is such a rich and beautiful [culture], and as a spiritual person I have a very deep appreciation for that, and I think it’s wonderful [Shen Yun] can be shown outside [China] for others to learn and see the roots of where that [culture] came from—the traditions, the roots, and how it can live on today that way.”

“I also found [the piece] called ‘Awakening,’ where [the lead character] was a soldier and turned his life around to become a monk—I found that especially touching. … To see somebody transform like that, and they represented it so well, the steps of the transformation. So we saw the whole thing and how magnificent it was and how humbling it was for him. It was very beautiful.”