SYDNEY, Australia—On March 27, Blacktown city councilor Jess Diaz attended Shen Yun Performing Arts’ evening show at the Sydney Lyric. This marked his second time seeing the performance, an experience that leaves him eager to return year after year.

“The show is really, really good,” Mr. Diaz shared. “It’s so accelerating and it’s so fresh.”

Based in New York, Shen Yun was founded in 2006 by elite Chinese artists who had fled the persecution of the communist party.

For 5,000 years, China’s civilization flourished under the shared belief that the divine will bless those who uphold traditional moral values. Tragically, within just a few decades of the communist party’s violent takeover, these beliefs were erased and replaced with atheism.

“I really like [the story about] the modern [world] because it’s a good adaptation. This is something new,” he said.

“It looks to me like a triumph of the human spirit. It’s like merging of the human and the divine. So, very well portrayed in terms of whatever’s happened in the world today.”

“Today is very refreshing. It’s a good reminder of what can be done. And if you persist, if you do it and through the hard work of the humanity of ours, and as I said, merging with the divine, with the faith, you can conquer all.”

“We must not forget the traditional value,” he added, “because that’s [what] sustains us [and] sustains the world, and we’re going to be saved by this traditional spirit.”

Mr. Diaz believes this is a barrier that must eventually be overcome. “We have to keep on going,” he shared. Shen Yun’s “specialty, the uniqueness, is a triumph of tradition—the traditional spirit which must sustain the world. This is [why] we have to come, again and again.”