DALLAS—When audience members say they’ve never seen anything like Shen Yun Performing Arts, they mean it quite literally.

It is a relatively young performing arts company—this year marks its 10th World Tour—though it draws from a reservoir of 5,000 years of Chinese civilization.

But, as audience member David Baxley explained, few people—especially in the West—have ever had contact with traditional Chinese culture. In the 60s, the communist regime took power, and sought to destroy the traditional culture. It is a period of Chinese history many audience members did not understand until seeing Shen Yun.

Artist Julie Hwang, who attended a performance with Mr. Baxley on Jan. 7 at the Winspear Opera House, said, about present day China, “those are messages that I find very awakening.”

New York-based Shen Yun showed both that spiritual beliefs of China’s traditional culture are still under attack in there today, and what these traditional beliefs truly were. Ms. Hwang was moved that the performance could show this.

Mr. Baxley said the revival of the traditional culture came through the music and dance.

“It was absolutely beautiful, because you can see the spiritual message that they were trying to [include] in a lot of the dances too. Because every one of them had some connectivity to the heavens or to humans. That was pulled off very well, that was intent that came out really well,” Mr. Baxley said.

Ancient Chinese believed in harmony between heaven and earth, and that was exactly what Mr. Baxley felt.

He said it was like a message of peace, of “meshing the three pieces—the human spirit, the heavenly spirit, and the earthly spirit.”

“It was very meditative. Everything should live in peace; if I was articulating the message that’s how I would say it—let there be peace,” he said.

Ms. Hwang commented on how this spirituality came through in the visuals. Even the colors, she said, were “very, very heavenly ... and very serene, very peaceful.”

Reporting by Amy Hu 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.

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.