JACKSONVILLE, Fla.—Shen Yun Performing Arts enthralled the audience at the Jacksonville Center for the Performing Arts on Dec. 27, including Rachel Mach and her husband, Oliver Gorospe.

“The colors and the costumes were so beautiful. It was clear that the inspiration was the divine. Very beautiful,” she said.

“I was also struck that a lot of the religious imagery from this Eastern religion (that I know very little about) was similar to Western religions, like a tree with fruit on it. There was also some imagery of a flood near the end and in the very beginning. In the very first scene, there was an image that appeared to be souls traveling to Earth. That also reminds me of [events] in Western religion,” she said.

Mr. Gorospe, a supervisor at the Mayo Clinic, also appreciated the spiritual aspects in the pieces. “I was brought up as a Catholic, so I can see a lot of the religious tones that were in the storytelling as well as the performance. I can appreciate how that was told as a story throughout the performance.”

Mr. Gorospe said, “I think as a performance, it was incredible to watch, and definitely something to learn because I didn’t know anything about it.”

“I did read a little bit in the program itself, and I was really excited to see how they were going to use that throughout the show. I thought it was pretty incredible without having to rely on a lot of movements of sets, to use the screen in the background.”

Mr. Gorospe also said it was amazing how the screen was able to present many scenes without changing sets. He liked how the screen could “really take advantage of multiple scenery, from modern [times] all the way to thousands of years [ago].”

“It really helped to portray that story as we’re going from point A to point B. I thought it was pretty phenomenal,” he said.

“I played violin as a teenager, and I could see how the skill is similar. It’s a bowed instrument with no frets, I assume. The skill that must be required to play that as well as she did was really impressive,” Ms. Mach said.