KANSAS CITY, Mo.—Claudia Salas and Mina Pena were both educators in South America before they moved to the United States.

“I saw the show before in South America ... in Colombia, which is my country, and it was, of course, a different show because it was three years ago. But again, I really enjoyed it here in Kansas City,” she said.

“I’m so glad that my friends came with me. We are all graduates students in the University of Kansas, in the Spanish and Portuguese Department,” she added.

“I really loved it: the coordination of the movements of the dancers going exactly [in] synchronization with the music and the orchestra,” she said.

“[T]he aesthetics, the strength and the beauty of the performance and the acting ... all of those skills combined together gave me a delightful experience,” she added.

She also commented on the tremendous energy of the performance. “I felt energy ... and the ideas, for example, this is the greatness of compassion.”

“Because they show this spiritual part too and this religious part, and in a certain way, they show the part against communism and against a lack of freedom,” she said.

John Walker, a retired scientific journal publisher, was also in the audience this evening. He purchased his Shen Yun tickets over a year ago and has been waiting for Shen Yun to perform in Kansas City since March, 2020.

“What I’m really struck by is the very old, the very ancient nature of the stories,” Walker said.

“I would think this would be a wonderful thing for Chinese Americans and others to have a better understanding of—the history of their people,” he added.

He applauded Shen Yun’s performers saying, “The dancing couldn’t possibly be better.”