“The orchestra is spectacular, I enjoyed hearing the Chinese instruments—I play brass myself—and it was just, it was tremendous,” said Neese, who plays with the Sheboygan Symphony Orchestra, Wisconsin’s oldest continually active orchestra which has been performing concerts since 1918.

“Do you know how hard it is to do that? It’s spectacular,” Neese said. “I’m really impressed, we'll be back again.”

Neese, like many who see Shen Yun, confessed he knew little about the 5,000 years of ancient China, in particular, how spiritual it was. China was once known as the Divine Land, its culture said to be divinely inspired, and that is the culture Shen Yun aims to share with the world.

Shen Yun often feels much more than the sum of its parts. Neese lauded the way the music, art, dance, singing, stories, and spirituality were meshed together to create something with significant meaning.

“I really loved it, and our seats were so fantastic,” said Kristine, because she was right in front of the flutist during the performance. It’s rare to see a performance with live music, much less a live full orchestra for a traveling production, and Kristine was thrilled with the talent and skill of the artists on stage and below.

“I thought the skill level was way up there,” said Kristine, who explained that with the setup she saw, the musicians must have memorized all the music and performed it perfectly in sync to everything that was happening.

“I just thought it was beautiful, it was wonderful. I think if someone asked me what I thought about it I would say it was a musical, visual movement masterpiece,” she said. “That’s how I would describe it because it’s really just, it’s an artistic expression.”

“You could experience what they were trying to communicate through the music and the dance, which is really amazing,” she said.