Shen Yun Performing Arts (Chinese: 神韻藝術團; lit. 'divine rhythm arts troupe') is a United States-based non-profit performing arts and entertainment company that tours internationally, producing performances including dance and symphonic music.[1][2] It is operated by the Falun Gong new religious movement.[3] Shen Yun is composed of eight large performing ensembles,[4] with a total of approximately 480 performers.[5] Shen Yun has performed in front of millions[6] and has toured more than 200 cities across Europe, North America, Oceania, and Asia.[4][6][7]
Shen Yun was founded in 2006 by Chinese expatriate adherents of Falun Gong, and is based at the Dragon Springs compound in Deerpark, New York, near where the group's leader Li Hongzhi and his followers reside.[8][9][10] Falun Gong adherents pay to rent the performance venue, promote the show, and sell tickets. After expenses are covered through ticket sales, proceeds go to Shen Yun.[1] The finances of Shen Yun and Falun Gong appear to be linked, with technically separate corporations sharing funds, executives and the same mission.[3] Li Hongzhi describes the Shen Yun performance as a means of "saving" audiences.[1]
Shen Yun's performances have been described as promoting sectarian doctrines and negative views of evolution and atheism.[11] The group is promoted by The Epoch Times, a far-right media outlet affiliated with Falun Gong.[3][12] In 2019, an NBC News assessment concluded that the Epoch Media Group and Shen Yun "make up the outreach effort of Falun Gong".[3] The Chinese government bars Shen Yun from performing in China, as it considers Falun Gong to be an "anti-society cult" and has attempted to cancel its performances abroad by pressuring theaters and governments.[13][14]
History and ties to Falun Gong
In 2006, a group of expatriate Chinese Falun Gong practitioners living in North America founded Shen Yun in New York.[15] The stated purpose of the company was to revive Chinese culture and traditions from the time before the Chinese Revolution.[16][17] In a journal article analyzing Falun Gong’s geopolitics, scholar Weihsuan Lin wrote: “Shen Yun’s ‘reviving five thousand years of civilization’ attempts to question and separate the entanglement between the Party and the State; it enacts, globally, an alternative geopolitical discourse in which a culturally rich and prosperous China without the CCP existed in the past and is coming again in the near future.”[18]
In 2007, the company conducted its first tour with 90 dancers, musicians, soloists, and production staff.[19] Early shows were titled "Chinese Spectacular",[8][9] "Holiday Wonders",[20] "Chinese New Year Splendor", and "Divine Performing Arts", but now the company performs exclusively under the name "Shen Yun". By 2009, Shen Yun had developed three full companies and orchestras that toured the world simultaneously. By the end of the 2010 season, approximately one million people had seen the troupes perform.[6]
New Tang Dynasty Television interview being conducted inside the State Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio, during a Shen Yun performance. The television broadcaster is affiliated with Falun Gong.
Shen Yun, the media organization The Epoch Times, and a variety of other organizations operate as extensions of Falun Gong. Los Angeles–based investigative reporter Samuel Braslow described Shen Yun's background in March 2020: "Both Shen Yun and Epoch Times are funded and operated by members of Falun Gong, a controversial spiritual group that was banned by China's government in 1999[...] Falun Gong melds traditional Taoist principles with occasionally bizarre pronouncements from its Chinese-born founder and leader, Li Hongzhi. Among other pronouncements, Li has claimed that aliens started invading human minds in the beginning of the 20th century, leading to mass corruption and the invention of computers. He has also denounced feminism and homosexuality and claimed he can walk through walls and levitate. But the central tenet of the group's wide-ranging belief system is its fierce opposition to communism. In 2000, Li founded Epoch Times to disseminate Falun Gong talking points to American readers. Six years later he launched Shen Yun as another vehicle to promote his teachings to mainstream Western audiences. Over the years Shen Yun and Epoch Times, while nominally separate organizations, have operated in tandem in Falun Gong's ongoing PR campaign against the Chinese government, taking directions from Li."[14][better source needed] Editor Chris Jennewein of MyNewsLA wrote that Los Angeles Magazine was sued for defamation in May 2020 by the Epoch Times, referring to Braslow's news report.[21]Los Angeles Magazine pulled the piece from their website in July, as ordered by federal judge George H. Wu, and published a retraction notice in the September 2020 issue of the magazine.[22][23]
Shen Yun operates out of Falun Gong's headquarters in the 427-acre (1.73 km2) Dragon Springs compound in Deerpark, New York, where it has large rehearsal spaces. Dragon Springs is registered as a religious property under the church name Dragon Springs Buddhist.[24] The exact financial and structural connections between Falun Gong, Shen Yun, and The Epoch Times remain unclear. According to NBC News: "The Epoch Media Group, along with Shen Yun, a dance troupe known for its ubiquitous advertising and unsettling performances, make up the outreach effort of Falun Gong, a relatively new spiritual practice that combines ancient Chinese meditative exercises, mysticism and often ultraconservative cultural worldviews. Falun Gong's founder has referred to Epoch Media Group as "our media", and the group's practice heavily informs The Epoch Times' coverage, according to former employees who spoke with NBC News. The Epoch Times, digital production company NTD and the heavily advertised dance troupe Shen Yun make up the nonprofit network that Li calls "our media". Financial documents paint a complicated picture of more than a dozen technically separate organizations that appear to share missions, money and executives."[3]
Billing and promotion
Shen Yun promotes itself as "a presentation of traditional Chinese culture as it once was: a study in grace, wisdom, and virtues distilled from five millennia of Chinese civilization". The company is described in promotions as reviving Chinese culture following a period of assault and destruction under the Chinese Communist Party.
Shen Yun is heavily promoted in major cities with commercials, billboards, and brochures displayed in the streets and in businesses, as well as in television and radio profiles. According to Jia Tolentino of The New Yorker, "The ads have to be both ubiquitous and devoid of content so that they can convince more than a million people to pay good money to watch what is, essentially, religious-political propaganda—or, more generously, an extremely elaborate commercial for Falun Dafa’s spiritual teachings and its plight vis-à-vis the Chinese Communist regime."[11] Referencing the religious theme in The Last Judgment and the political theme in The Sound of Music, Yuefeng Wu, a PhD student in art history, wrote in a 2024 opinion piece for The Hill: "To take politics and religion as the sole end of Shen Yun’s art rather than its context is to deny the vital human experience of hope and kindness, which many of its audiences, whatever their political and religious orientations, are already taking away from it."[25]
Shen Yun performances are often presented or sponsored by regional Falun Dafa associations,[26][27] members of Falun Gong, which has been labeled a "cult" and banned by the Chinese government.[15][28] Some audience members have objected to the show's promotion strategy, which does not note the religious- and political-themed content of the performance.[29][30]
In 2021, the troupe began billing its shows as "China Before Communism".[31]
Content
Dance
Large-scale group dance is at the center of Shen Yun productions.[9] Each touring company consists of about 40 male and female dancers, who mainly perform classical Chinese dances, making extensive use of acrobatic and tumbling techniques, forms and postures.[32][33]
Shen Yun's repertoire draws on stories from Chinese history and legends, such as the legend of Mulan,[34]Journey to the West and Outlaws of the Marsh. It also depicts "the story of Falun Gong today".[35] During the 2010 production, at least two of the 16 scenes depicted "persecution and murder of Falun Gong practitioners" in contemporary China, including the beating of a young mother to death, and the jailing of a Falun Gong protester. In addition to classical Han Chinese dance, Shen Yun also includes elements of Yi, Miao, Tibetan and Mongolian dance.
Shen Yun performs three core elements of classical Chinese dance: bearing (emotion, cultural and ethnic flavor), form (expressive movements and postures), and technical skill (physical techniques of jumping, flipping, and leaping).[8] Shen Yun choreographer Vina Lee has stated that some of the distinct Chinese bearing (yun) has been "lost in the process" since the cultural changes of the Communist revolution.[8]
Music
Shen Yun dances are accompanied by Chinese instruments: the pipa, suona, dizi, guzheng, and a variety of Chinese percussion instruments. A full Western orchestra leads the melodies.[6][36] There are solo performances featuring Chinese instruments such as the erhu in between dances.[8][37] Interspersed between dance sequences, other than the erhu performances, are operatic singers performing songs which sometimes invoke spiritual or religious themes, including references to the Falun Gong faith.[6][38] A performance in 2007, for instance, included a reference to the Chakravartin, a figure in Buddhism who turns the wheel of Dharma.[39]
The music for Shen Yun was composed by Jing Xian and Junyi Tan. Three of Shen Yun's performers—flutist Ningfang Chen, erhuist Mei Xuan and tenor Guan Guimin—were recipients of the Chinese Ministry of Culture's "National First Class Performer" awards. Prior to joining Shen Yun, Guan Guimin was well known in China for his work on soundtracks for more than 50 movies and television shows. Other notable performers include erhu soloist Xiaochun Qi.[40]
Shen Yun's dancers perform wearing intricate costumes, often accompanied by a variety of props.[8][6] Some costumes are intended to imitate the dress of various ethnicities, while others depict ancient Chinese court dancers, soldiers, or characters from classic stories.[8] Props include colorful handkerchiefs, drums,[8] fans, chopsticks, or silk scarves.[35][41]
Each Shen Yun piece is set against a digitally projected backdrop, usually depicting landscapes such as Mongolian grasslands, imperial courts, ancient villages, temples, or mountains.[6][42][43] Some backdrops contain moving elements, such as digital versions of the dancers, that integrate with the performance.[41]
Tours
Shen Yun's eight companies tour for six months each year, performing in over 130 cities in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Latin America.[6] Notable venues include the David H. Koch Theater at New York's Lincoln Center in Manhattan;[44] the London Coliseum in London, England; the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Italy;[45] and the Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington, D.C. By the conclusion of Shen Yun's 2010 performance, an estimated one million people had seen the performance worldwide.[6]
Shen Yun does not perform in China and the Chinese government has attempted to cancel Shen Yun performances elsewhere through political pressure exerted by its foreign embassies and consulates.[46][47][48][49] Chinese diplomats have also sent letters to elected officials in the West exhorting them not to attend or otherwise support the performance, which they describe as "propaganda" intended to "smear China's image."[50][51] Members of the Communist Party's top political consultative body have also expressed concern that China's state-funded arts troupes have been less popular internationally than Shen Yun.[52] Shen Yun representatives say the Chinese government's opposition to the show stems from its depictions of modern-day political oppression in China, and that it includes expressions of traditional Chinese cultural history that the Communist government has tried to suppress.[53]
Shen Yun was scheduled to perform in Hong Kong in January 2010, but the event was cancelled after the government refused entry visas to Shen Yun's production crew.[54] Attempts to shut down the show have also been reported by theatres and local governments in various countries including Ecuador, Ireland, Germany and Sweden.[55]
In October 2012, Shen Yun's symphony orchestra made its debut performance at Carnegie Hall in New York. The performance featured conductors Milen Nachev, Keng-Wei Kuo, and Antonia Joy Wilson, and the program included both classical works such as Beethoven's Egmont Overture and Antonio Vivaldi's Concerto in C Major, as well as original compositions that fuse Chinese and Western instruments.[56]
Sid Smith of Chicago Tribune wrote that a 2008 Shen Yun performance was "more uneven" than other cultural performances he had seen, but that the women dancers were "a beautiful and haunting ensemble" with "a nimble mastery of traditional talents."[41] Sarah Crompton of The Daily Telegraph wrote of a 2008 Shen Yun performance: "This show is advertised as a Chinese spectacular – a kind of Eastern version of Cirque du Soleil. It is nothing of the kind. Acrobatics, singing and dancing skills are used in the service of a propaganda exercise on the part of Falun Gong ... But what I really object to is that such a politically motivated performance is being smuggled on to stages around Europe in the name of family entertainment."[59]
Regina Weinreich wrote in a HuffPost blog that Shen Yun's debut at Lincoln Center in 2011 "enacts the rich cultural heritage of China" and noted some descriptions of oppression in the performance.[53] Fashion designer Donna Karan and her Urban Zen foundation hosted celebrities at an opening night and said, "I love when it gets into the soul".[60] Laura Falcoff, writing in the Argentinian newspaper Clarín, described Shen Yun in 2012 as a "spectacular production that beautifully combines China's ancient traditions with cutting-edge technological advancements" and called it an "ideal performance for audiences of all ages, especially children."[61] Carmen Del Val of the Spanish newspaper El País wrote that a 2014 performance was "an explosion of color and energy".[62] Rachel Molenda of Charleston Gazette-Mail wrote of a 2015 Shen Yun performance at the Clay Center, where the audience gave a standing ovation, "The pairing of projected backgrounds and animation with real-time performance (dance and orchestral) was surreal. Sometimes I questioned whether the musicians, whose compositions were lovely, were really there."[63] Gisela Orozco of Chicago Tribune wrote that a 2016 Shen Yun performance emphasized "the cultural part and faith that existed before in China," presented "fables told with dance and music, which talk about philosophy, literature and art”, and expressed values “such as loyalty, kindness, bravery, love”.[64]
The 2018 and 2019 performances included lyrics and digital displays disparaging atheism and belief in evolution as "deadly ideas",[11] leading to complaints by some attenders that the shows were "anti-evolution", resembled a "religious sermon", or were "cult propaganda."[65] An article in the Star-Tribune of Minneapolis said the political message of Shen Yun "feels more like propaganda than straightforwardly presented cultural heritage."[66] Jia Tolentino wrote in The New Yorker that a scene in the show contained homophobia.[11] Alix Martichoux from the Houston Chronicle wrote, "For many disgruntled Shen Yun attendees, it's not necessarily that the show itself is bad – though to be fair, some complain it is. Most of the negative reviews were people upset they were blindsided by the political content."[65] Tolentino described a scene: "Chairman Mao appeared, and the sky turned black; the city in the digital backdrop was obliterated by an earthquake, then finished off by a Communist tsunami. A red hammer and sickle glowed in the center of the wave[...] a huge, bearded face [disappeared] in the water[...] a tsunami with the face of Karl Marx."[11]
Pablo M. Díez of the Spanish newspaper ABC wrote in 2023, "Shen Yun's shows are a dazzling combination of dance and music with synchronized choreography in majestic settings."[67]
In a 2023 Washington Post opinion piece, Emily Needham, a Ph.D. student in history, drew parallels between Shen Yun and Cold War-era U.S. State Department’s cultural diplomacy programs, describing both as being “built on the idea that dance can transcend language differences and build mutual understanding with audiences through a shared cultural experience.” She concluded: “Today’s Shen Yun performances are grand, with a large cast of 180 brilliant dancers, spectacular sets and bright colors. Dance can be beautiful while also performing political arguments. They are not mutually exclusive.”[68]
Chinese government interference
The Chinese government has attempted to stop the group from performing abroad by pressuring theatre managers[67][69] or sending letters or e-mails to theaters in multiple countries,[70][71] including Ireland, Germany,[72] and Sweden.[73] According to Shen Yun, the Chinese government also attempted to cancel Shen Yun's performance in Hong Kong by rejecting the entry visas of six members.[74][75]
In a 2024 opinion piece for The Hill, Yuefeng Wu, a PhD student in art history, argued that the Chinese government’s efforts to interfere stem from fear, that Shen Yun's portrayal of “what China was and could be without the Communist Party” challenges the regime’s proclaimed legitimacy as the embodiment of Chinese civilization.[25]
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