SAN ANTONIO—Two very different men, a minister and a musician, arrived at the same theater in San Antonio Saturday night, both with the same plan—to see a dance show inspired by the divine.
Kris Zabrowski, who has his own music band called King Pelican and specializes in surfing music, arrived at the Tobin Center to watch Shen Yun Performing Arts. The New York-based company lit up the stage with bright costumes and retold myths of ancient China, aspiring with all their hearts to revive the lost spiritual culture of the East.
Naturally, as a musician, Zabrowski was especially noticing Shen Yun’s live orchestra. “I like the mix of the traditional, old Chinese instruments and the Western kind of tradition there,” he said, speaking to The Epoch Times in the theater. He said the music felt “different” from segment to segment; “sometimes it’s uplifting and optimistic-seeming, and then other times it’s a little more sad, bleak.”
Shen Yun’s stories are told through classical Chinese dance and integrate symphonic sounds of both Eastern and Western instruments. Some segments are extremely beautiful and uplifting, while others set a more serious tone—particularly those set in modern-day China. The dancers’ mission is to revive a culture that was “almost lost” in China’s destructive Cultural Revolution. Segments of the show even portray religious persecution.
“I think it’s an absolute tragedy what happened in China,” Zabrowski said. “Mao coming in, trying to do the whole thing, smashing the ‘four olds,’ 5,000 years of history and culture and tradition and knowledge, just trying to push that out. That was ridiculous. So it’s awesome to see the old, the traditional stuff.”
Accompanying Zabrowski was Erin Zayko, a manager in aerospace, who was appreciating Shen Yun’s performance and said, “I am enjoying the traditional reflections.”
While Shen Yun aspires to present “China before communism”—including ancient values and spirituality suppressed by the officially atheist Chinese Communist Party—the dance company isn’t allowed in China. Many of the performers are Falun Dafa believers, while some even had to flee China for fear of persecution themselves.
David Crowley attends Shen Yun at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts in San Antonio on Jan. 24, 2026. Nancy Ma/The Epoch Times
David Crowley, a minister who saw the same show as Zabrowski on Saturday, has religious beliefs of his own. He attended Shen Yun and appreciated their gorgeous display of dance and ancient storytelling all the same.
“It’s colorful and graceful. The live music is really so full and wonderful, and everybody’s skill is just so amazing,” he told the newspaper. “It’s telling stories and revealing a lot of things about the culture that I didn’t know.”
Crowley saw universal aspects in some of what Shen Yun presents. The show begins with a scene in the Chinese heavens and with the Creator who descends to Earth with an entourage of deities. They then become a parade of dynasties and play out China’s grand history throughout the ages. They give rise to all ethnicities of the Middle Kingdom and many great heroes and dramas.
“It looks like the message I see is the desire to have life from the Creator,” he said. “We all want that. We want heaven, and we want to be free to worship, too. It’s very tragic that people are persecuted for worshiping in China.”
Then he added, “We have to work against that and love people no matter what. Love is everything.”
He said Shen Yun’s mission to restore China’s traditional values means “getting back to the foundations of truth.” And although he was firm that he “may have different theological positions” as the performers of Shen Yun, he went so far as to add that “I haven’t been to anything like this for many years, and it’s a great pleasure.”
