SAN FRANCISCO—Beauty can be appreciated by everyone and Richard McVicker, a production coordinator for a bank, couldn’t understand why China would ban a performance as beautiful as Shen Yun Performing Arts.

“It’s extremely beautiful and the message is very peaceful, and all about the history. It’s a lot of things that we don’t really know about China. It’s the belief of coming from heaven and all the history. Why would you suppress any of that? It just doesn’t make any sense,” said Mr. McVicker.

“I just can’t see what Beijing is so afraid of. There’s nothing controversial or negative about any of this,” said Mr. McVicker.

Shen Yun is based in New York, and its mission is to revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilization. Shen Yun uses its art to raise awareness of the atrocities happening in present-day China.

“That’s ridiculous that they can’t see it in China. There’s nothing wrong with any of it,” Mr. McVicker added.

Shen Yun’s artists are trained in classical Chinese dance, one of the most comprehensive dance systems in the world.

“It’s awesome. It’s very beautiful. You can kind of see how the dance and martial arts kind of go together,” said Mr. McVicker.

The Shen Yun website tells us that classical Chinese dance and martial arts have striking similarities. Some of the movements seen in martial arts can also be found in classical Chinese dance.

“I would really love to see it top down, to see the patterns of how everybody mixes together,” said Mr. McVicker.

“It’s really cool how they blend it in. They jump right into the screen. It’s really beautiful,” said Mr. McVicker.

“People need to hear and see more. I was going to tell all my coworkers about this because it’s so beautiful,” he said.