HIGH WYCOMBE, UK—At the theater on Friday afternoon, Matt Osborne was searching for a word to describe the mixture of movement, color, and music that he witnessed onstage when he was interviewed after watching Shen Yun Performing Arts.

“Grace, I think, is the word,” Mr. Osborne, manager at an IT company, said of the performance. Shen Yun is “really great” and like “nothing that I’ve seen similar before,” he added.

Today, Mr. Osborne brought his kids to the Wycombe Swan Theatre to see traditional Chinese culture as presented by the New York-based dance company, which has been touring for the past 20 years. Shen Yun’s dozens of dancers and artists have a passion for classical Chinese dance and reviving the ancient values that were “almost lost” in China’s after the destructive cultural revolution during the mid-1960s.

“You can get a real sense of the ancient culture within it,” Osborne said, “that real sense of real grace.”

Although this Chinese dance style dates back thousands of years, to when martial artists were called upon to perform leaps and turns for lords and ladies in ancient palaces, today, it’s been systematized. Now, Shen Yun uses the artform to communicate the past to the present, and to remind the world of “China before communism.”

While Osborne was amazed by the acrobatic nature of classical Chinese dance, another theatergoer, Reece Pearson, a hotel supervisor, was enthralled by a famed mythical character from Chinese folklore: the Monkey King.

They highlight time-honored motifs, such as the peacock and dragon, but more importantly, they show how the ancient culture venerated the values of kindness and loyalty that continue to hold society together today.

“What an incredible job,” Pearson said. “I can’t praise them enough. It’s absolutely amazing.”