COSTA MESA, Calif.—Marjorie Galas, a senior vice president at the Association of Film Commissioners International, admired the skill, beauty, artistry, and drama of the entire Shen Yun Performing Arts experience.

After seeing the New York-based company perform at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa on April 16, she wanted to commend the artists for their mission.

Founded in 2006, Shen Yun was established with the mission of reviving 5,000 years of Chinese civilization, through the arts. Today, it is the world’s top classical Chinese dance company, bringing this thousands of years old dance form to audiences in over a hundred cities every season.

“It’s amazing that this type of performance has been carried on for that long and I commend all of the young dancers that are participating, and everyone that works so hard to put the show on, to maintain the sense of tradition, but also merge it into a modern world, a modern setting,” Galas said.

“They have such unity and the precision of their movement. It seems like a very simple type of execution but I know that it takes a lot of skill to work in the type of rigidity that they had with their arms and their movement, making their costume flow in the way that they did,“ Galas said. ”So it really is a spectacle because it seems simple, but I know it takes so much skill.”

She noted that the live orchestra combined the ancient Chinese instruments with a Western ensemble including violins and trumpets, and how the background of the set with digital and seemed to come alive.

She enjoyed that “merging that technology with the traditional dance.”

Galas described one dance as an example that embodied this creative imagination, wherein a young girl dreams about her favorite painting, coming in and out of it as the dancers moved between stage and screen.

“It was quite seamless the way that it was orchestrated,“ Galas said. ”So it was a bit of magical element to it.”

“Obviously it was created to seem magical, but it also a mystery that added to that magic. As a viewer, you try to understand how did they do that exactly,” Galas said.

“I give a lot of credit taking something that’s very traditional, merging modern elements to it, but maintaining the steepness of the tradition with the amount they’re doing,” Galas said.