COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—Absolutely gorgeous and educational were two ways Steve Garman, an account executive with local KKTV television station, described a performance of the New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts on Tuesday.

“It’s amazing to me. The very first scene mirrors what I believe about religion coming from the ages back,” Garman said after watching Shen Yun’s performance at Colorado’s Pikes Peak Center for the Performing Arts.

“It is absolutely gorgeous. The colors, the use of the screen, and then the people popping up behind,” he said.

Performers are able to seamlessly interact with the projection to create magical experiences of characters flying through the sky or diving deep into the sea. This feature is unique to Shen Yun and has since been patented by the company.

“They need to go see it. They need to go see it with an open mind, and don’t have any preconceived notions of Chinese culture and people because it’s mind-opening,” he said.

Also in the audience were Athena and James Baschal.

“The inspiration that I’ll take from this production will be the gracefulness and the beautiful formations that you can make with a group of 12 or 24,” Athena said.

James, her husband, is a software developer who is also a musician.

“I paid a lot of attention to brass since I played brass,” James said. “The precision [in the performance] is amazing: precision of the musicians, the dancers—it was just tremendous.”

James was also amazed by the erhu soloist. “Oh, that was just incredible. She could do that with two strings,” he said.