SAN FRANCISCO—Todd Papaioannou, CTO of Splunk, and Farah Giga, principal at early stage venture capitalist firm Amplify Partners, praised the energy of Shen Yun Performing Arts seeing the performance for the first time at the War Memorial Opera House Jan. 9.

“I thought the show was beautiful. It’s very elegant, very graceful. There’s a lot of variety to it,” said Ms. Giga.

“I really, really enjoyed the show,” said Mr. Papaioannou, who previously served as a vice president and the chief cloud architect for Yahoo. “The music and the costumes are fantastic. The colors are fantastic.”

New York-based Shen Yun revives 5,000 years of Chinese civilization, said to be inspired by the heavens, through the universal languages of music and dance.

Ms. Giga said Shen Yun had captured what traditional Chinese culture was in the dance, and particularly liked the costumes used.

“I loved the way they used the different fabrics and the different pieces with the sleeves and the fans, and it just had this beautiful flow to it,” Ms. Giga said.

Shen Yun’s objective in costuming is to give the audience an “authentic presentation of the attire that comes from China’s divinely inspired traditional culture, and a consummate stage effect,” as its website states. Costumes feature items like the “flower pot” shoes Manchurian princesses wore in the 17th century, phoenix coronet, water sleeves, and hundreds of other pieces every season.

“It’s beautiful; it’s very diverse. It was very vibrant. A lot of energy in it; a lot of movement in it,” Ms. Giga said. “I thought it was beautiful.”

Mr. Papaioannou enjoyed the stories Shen Yun told through dance, and appreciated the use of humor throughout.

“We really enjoyed it, absolutely,” Mr. Papaioannou said.

Mr. Papaioannou had also been impressed with Shen Yun’s digital backdrop, which allowed the dancers to appear on stage one moment and on screen the next. “It was very clever,” he said.

Reporting by Gary Wang and Catherine Yang

New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has four touring companies that perform simultaneously around the world. For more information, visit Shen Yun Performing Arts.

The Epoch Times considers Shen Yun Performing Arts the significant cultural event of our time. We have proudly covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.