INDIANAPOLIS—Dana Russo was on Facebook when she saw something unlike anything else she usually saw online: Shen Yun Performing Arts. It immediately spoke to her, and it turned out she had been thinking aloud when she saw the ad. Her grandson heard her say she wanted to see Shen Yun, and called her up with tickets.

On April 2, Russo attended a Shen Yun performance at the Butler Arts Center with her dear friend Dianne Hines.

“The music was uplifting and the artistry, everything fit together so beautifully. The costumes and the movement, and the music, and the way they use the screen. It was really fantastic,” said Russo, who is a great lover of music and sings gospel.

Hines added, “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”

New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s foremost classical Chinese dance company, unique not only in its mission to revive the nearly-lost 5,000 years of culture, but in its artistic production.

To date, there are six equal-sized groups that tour the globe simultaneously, and each is accompanied by a live orchestra blending ancient Chinese instruments into a classical Western orchestra. The set is a patented marvel, with an animated screen that audiences say transports them through time and space.

Russo said she loved how the elements of the performance came together, and the energy and synergy of it all.

“It’s the energy of the music,” she said. “It’s uplifting, it affects my emotions.

“The dancing and the flying and the costumes—art. I feel that God created it to lift our spirits,” she said. “The music and the whole of everything—this program.”

Traditional Chinese culture is said to be divinely inspired, and though Russo’s own culture is different, she found those values to be universal.

“I do believe that God created beauty and art and music and dance and all things to enjoy. And so I resonated with that aspect of it,” she said.

“Quality was just exceptional,” Russo said.