SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Shen Yun Is ’10 out of 10,’ Says Company Owner

Feb 18, 2026

2/18/2026Updated: 2/18/2026

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.—Jeweler and company owner Marco Aletto and his wife Aislinn Short, a homemaker, had no prior experience with traditional Chinese culture before attending Shen Yun Performing Arts’ evening show on Feb. 17, at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts.

Exiting the theater, Mr. Aletto said it was “an infatuating experience.”

“I loved it. It’s a really great show of Chinese culture and the beauty that came from very traditional arts,” he shared. “I thought the [pieces,] the costume design, and the utilization of technology really bring forth an element of the history [and] Chinese culture. It was magnificent.”

He was wowed by the artists’ innovative use of a 3D digital backdrop, which collaborated seamlessly with dancers onstage to create magical illusions for storytelling.

“I love that,” Mr. Aletto said. “That technology was really neat. The utilization of it was very clever. Really, really fun.”

Ms. Short also spoke warmly of the performance.

“I loved it. It was beautiful,” she said. “I thought the messaging was very beautiful [because it’s] incredibly spiritual.”

As one of the world’s oldest civilizations, China’s 5,000 years of history are rich with breathtaking legends and time-honored traditions. Yet within just a few decades of the Chinese communists’ rise to power, much of this magnificent culture was destroyed.

The spread of atheism rapidly undermined belief in the divine, and the cherished virtues drawn from Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism were swept away.

Today, New York–based Shen Yun is working to revive this lost civilization and to bring back, through dance and music, the beauty of China before communism.

Mr. Aletto found these spiritual themes very meaningful and thought it’s fascinating that Christianity and traditional Chinese spirituality shared many of the same principles and values.

“The spiritual message was very powerful,” he shared. “It was peppered in throughout the entirety of the performances, especially in the vocalizations of the soprano towards the end. I thought it was really nice.”

“The parallels to Western Christianity were very apparent ... the expression was powerful enough to show that there is a level of energy and spirituality against the totalitarianism and authoritarianism that might come from some governments.”

Commenting on the skill of Shen Yun’s dancers and live orchestra that brought together a classic Western orchestration with traditional Chinese melodies and instruments, Mr. Aletto said the artists were amazingly talented.

“The [dancers] are obviously incredibly well trained, well synchronized, well oriented with each other. You could see that they had trained so much for this. Their performance reflected their hours and hours of practice,” he added.

“The orchestra did a fantastic job. Every aspect of it harmonized incredibly well between not only the dancing performers, but also the orchestra and the backdrop—three points of contact. Very hard. It was very impressive.”

Ms. Short chimed in that she loved Shen Yun’s music because it feels “very connected with spirituality and with nature.”

“It spoke to me,” she said. “The message to me was [about] being more connected with your own spirit as opposed to the earthly things.”

The couple will definitely recommend Shen Yun to their friends and family.

“This was something very new for me. You read about different things, and you learn about different [cultures] throughout your entire schooling, but to see it on stage was really, really a completely new experience,” Mr. Aletto said.

“I'd recommend it every time. 10 out of 10.”

Reporting by Kailiang Jiang and Jennifer Tseng.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.