“It’s like being in a dream, hypnotized … it takes you away into the clouds,” said Mr. Kaukomaa after the performance at the Festival Theatre on the afternoon of April 9.

“My experience of this was profound,” he said, “I’ve never experienced such in my life—probably never again!”

Based in New York, Shen Yun Performing Arts is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company. Along with folk dances and solo performances, the production depicts story-based pieces that tell tales from ancient times to the modern day.

Since 2006, Shen Yun has performed at top theatres worldwide with a mission to revive China’s 5,000-year-old traditional culture. Drawing upon ancient China’s Buddhist and Daoist philosophies, Shen Yun says its performances demonstrate “China before communism.”

“They bring together so much of the wealth of their nation, the longevity of their culture,” said Mr. Kaukomaa, “it is a good way to say the old Chinese culture has been there for thousands of years and look how beautiful it is!”

As an architect with a trained eye for patterns, he said the choreographed movement of the dancers and the colors were sequences of patterns that brought out emotions such as “serenity [and] beauty.”

Commenting on Shen Yun’s live symphony orchestra that plays original compositions to accompany the dances, he said it was “heavenly.”

The Shen Yun Orchestra is the first symphony orchestra in the world to permanently combine classical Western and Chinese instruments.

Ancient Chinese instruments, such as the two-string erhu and the pipa, lead the melody amidst the traditional instruments found in a Western orchestra.