PHOENIX—Although “Journey to the West” seems like a story of a monk and his three strange disciples on a journey to find Buddhist scriptures, it is also a story of the three characters bettering themselves while overcoming countless obstacles. Shen Yun Performing Arts is putting this classic novel from the Ming Dynasty on stages across the globe.

“A lot of these stories are all about the battle between oppressive forces and those that are trying to escape from them or otherwise contest with them,” commented Mr. McWhirter.

“The contemporary story too, I was a little surprised you were allowed to do that. I think it’s good that you do that. And in fact, when my wife got us tickets, I was under the impression that this was an organization coming from mainland China,” said Mr. McWhirter.

“It wasn’t until I got here that I realized this. And I went, OK, this is going to be more interesting than I thought, because I was afraid we were going to just get the sanitized governmental version of what Chinese culture was all about,” commented Mr. McWhirter.

Mr. McWhirter enjoyed the learning experience, as did others in the audience from what he could see.

“I really like the idea about the people thinking that a lot of the movements during the dance came from gymnastics when it didn’t,” he said. In fact, as the emcees explain, the ancient dance form is full of tumbling techniques that acrobatics, gymnastics, and other dance forms have since borrowed. “It came from the type of Chinese dancing that originated thousands of years ago.”