NEW YORK—Dean and Melinda Maines enjoyed Shen Yun Performing Arts at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater on March 29.

“I love the way that they pull them back down, in, and they pull them back out. I think it was just beautiful. Great choreography,” she said.

“We’ve been to a couple of shows like this, but this has been amazing, being able to see the interaction of the orchestra with how it works well with the dancers. Amazing.”

“The soprano—very beautiful. Of course, we couldn’t understand what she was speaking about, but there were words on the back so we could read along with it. ... Very well done,” Mr. Maines said.

They were moved by the message conveyed in the song. “That’s a good one,” Mr. Maines said. “I’m not necessarily a religious person, but I understand the religious undertones to it. It’s an amazing story from start to finish of how it all comes down and how [the song] brings it to the present day.”

Before the Communist Party’s spread of atheism, Chinese people were deeply spiritual and believed in the divine. For thousands of years, their values and day-to-day actions were strictly governed by the teachings of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism.

Mrs. Maines said, “The message was beautiful. I think that when she sang about it, you didn’t even have to know what the words were because you can understand from the way that she was singing it, the feeling that she had about it. It was very intense.”