“I feel honored to have seen this year’s performance,” said Mrs. Matthews, an actress and model, after seeing the performance at The Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Jan. 18. “This is very, very special to me.”

“I thought it was magnificent. Just all together, every single piece was beautiful,” she said.

“The music is beautiful,” he said. “The message is more.”

New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company, with a mission to show the world China before communism.

“I think that’s very important today. I think that’s a very important message for everybody today, just to keep tradition and value and honor and integrity intact,” said Mrs. Matthews. “The Chinese culture is special. It’s very spiritual, and it connects heaven and earth, and the divine and human.”

Mrs. Matthews said the performance conveyed hope, and “hope is very important today.”

“And it’s just like, okay, there’s still some solid values out there,” she said, adding that another key takeaway from the experience was “renewal.”

“Renewed faith in the world,” she said. “I feel refreshed after seeing this.”

Mr. Matthews felt similarly.

“ I loved it,” he said. “I think the sentiment of the show was beautiful, and I disagree with those that say otherwise ... the sentiment comes through the show. And that’s a very refreshing thing to hear.”

“Because nowadays, we kind of lost touch with divinity and stuff like that. So, it’s a good thing to be reminded about,” Mr. Matthews said.

Mrs. Matthews agreed, adding, “I cried at some points.”

“Music ... it’s like our humanity. It has to connect,” he said.  “Music has to connect.”

“For me, merging the two worlds of Eastern and Western is the most beautiful thing ever. Music is 360, everything together. So, I love that. The part is beautiful,” he said.

The Shen Yun orchestras are unique in that they combine ancient Chinese instruments with a classical Western orchestra, and the ensemble performs original compositions that make use of ancient Chinese melodies.

“They did everything as one figure, which is pretty spectacular,” he said. “Everything was beautiful, really. The colors, everything. And again, the sentiment is what you live with at the end. You leave the place, and that stays with your art. And I really appreciate that part. So, you give your sense like a transcendentality. Yes, it transcends the art itself.”

“The message is about brotherhood, and connect with divinity, and all of that. And we should be thinking about that stuff,” he said. “You can see around us. You can see how much that thing has got lost. And now we’re replacing that with new values. And I do appreciate going back to our origins and to our connections to our creators and the nature and the world around us, all of that.”

“The energy is there, and it’s all one to deliver the message,” he said.