SAN ANTONIO, Texas—It occurred to Jason Echols when watching Shen Yun Performing Arts on Sunday that their movements looked a lot like kung-fu—and he loved that.

But, as he shared with The Epoch Times after the show, he also felt a strikingly spiritual message behind the ancient Chinese legends that the dancers enacted onstage.

While the legendary Monkey King did perform flips and flying kicks across the stage—similar to the famed Shaolin kung-fu masters of old—the stories conveyed moral virtues commonly recognized across cultural boundaries. Theatergoers at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts said they enjoyed the spiritual message in Shen Yun.

“I loved the compassion and the kindness,” Mr. Echols said. “All of that resonated well with me.”

This message has resonated positively with audiences, though it’s also one reason why Shen Yun is banned from performing in China. Many of its performers are Falun Gong believers, whose faith is banned in China.

“It makes me sad that in China, they don’t get to celebrate the same thing [as Shen Yun],” Jason Echols’s wife Alissa, a vascular surgeon, said. “It was stunningly beautiful.”

Forrest Wilson, who manages a semi-conductor production company by day, saw the same performance on Sunday and said he loved the costumed female dancers. Their long, flowing “water sleeves” seemed to float weightlessly with every gesture.

“I like how they swing with everything around like that,” he told the newspaper. “It’s all new to me.”

Like the Echols and the rest of the audience that evening, Mr. Wilson also learned about Shen Yun’s mission to remind the world of “China before communism.”

“I’m glad that they’re making other people aware of what’s happening [in China],” he said. “I think it’s very important to let the whole world know so that things can change.”