SAN ANTONIO—Alex Riggs spent the afternoon of New Year’s Eve on a family outing—her 90-year-old father had invited everyone to see a performance by Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts—and from the moment it began, it only got better.

“It was fantastic. I loved it; it couldn’t have been better. It’s just a feeling of elation and happiness, and everything, with every performance, just built one on the other,” said Ms. Riggs, CEO of the anti-trafficking organization Children’s Rescue Alliance.

“Oh, I can’t wait to see it again,” she said.

“Shen Yun” translates roughly to “the beauty of divine beings dancing,” and its mission is to revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilization, believed to be divinely inspired.

Ms. Riggs said she “a thousand percent” thought the artists lived up to the name.

“Every single performance was perfection,” she said.

“Between the beauty of the costumes and the beautiful movements of the dancers and the orchestra, just the combination was perfection,” she said.

“Just the kindness that they share through their movement, and through song and dance— it’s about bringing joy and peace to the world, and they absolutely do that a thousand percent,” Ms. Riggs said.

“Especially in this state of the world right now, it’s imperative that we all learn to not only give kindness but to also accept it,” she continued. “Something like this, they’re sharing their talent and beauty, and it’s a gift to everyone who sees it. And it’s something we can go out and share with the rest of the world and try to share a little bit of what we saw today: kindness with people we run into afterward.”

“It’s just something that you have to see; you just absolutely have to see it,” she said. “You can’t describe it. There’s no way that even the commercials and the posters can describe what you see in person. It’s just something that you have to see for yourself.”