FILE – Shen Yun Dance Company promotes China in the face of communism with billboard advertising upcoming performance in Leavenworth, Kansas. (Photo by Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group, Getty Images)
If you’ve never seen a Shen Yun performance, you’ve probably seen their advertisements.
Shen Yun is currently promoting performances in more than 60 cities in the United States and dozens more in other countries over the next three months only. Dance troupes visit hundreds of cities each year, and cities are often filled with billboards, flyers, and bus advertisements before each tour departs.
Advertisements usually depict dancers spinning and jumping in the air. The 2024 trailer tempts viewers to “experience 5,000 years of divinely inspired art.” A 2020 ad called the show an “inspirational, life-changing show.”
However, a memo from the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China gives mixed opinions about the performance, stating, “This organization preaches heretical fallacies that are anti-humanitarian and anti-scientific, and encourages its followers to pursue extreme They are practicing mental manipulation. This is a cult that seriously harms society and violates human rights, and is the very cancer of modern civilized society.”
The Chinese government’s main issue with Shen Yun is its association with Falun Gong or Falun Dafa.
Falun Dafa is a religious movement that emerged in the early 1990s. It incorporates elements of Buddhism and Taoism and combines them with meditation, breathing exercises, and qigong-like exercises, according to Human Rights Watch. The practice was banned in China in 1999 and violently suppressed, CNN reported.
In a warning to potential showgoers, the Chinese embassy calls Falun Gong an “anti-social cult.”
Shen Yun does not deny its relationship with Falun Dafa, and openly acknowledges the relationship. Shen Yun said its performers were being persecuted in China and facing sabotage around the world. The group says their efforts to share their belief systems through dance and music have been met with harassment, hate crimes and the tires of their tour vehicles being slashed.
Shen Yun is just one high-profile expression of Falun Gong and Falun Dafa. You may have seen the Epoch Times newspaper at newsstands around town. The New York Times and NBC News report that Falun Gong-backed right-wing news organizations have significantly expanded their power and readership in recent years.
Shen Yun will refer people with questions to local speakers, many of whom are local chapters of the Falun Dafa Association. Repeated attempts by Nexstar to reach his two local chapters for comment on this matter were unsuccessful.
So, is Shen Yun a life-changing artistic masterpiece? Dangerous cult propaganda? Critics who watched the show say both sides are exaggerating.
“Trying to uncover the truth about Shen Yun is standing between two forces that are trying to beat you with propaganda and trying to figure out which side to lean on,” wrote Nicholas Hune-Brown in a review for the Guardian. .
Gia Tolentino, who went to see two performances of a production in The New Yorker magazine, wrote that it was “much nicer and much smaller than it looked.” A long Reddit opinion thread about the show is full of people regretting spending money on tickets to the show. They did not convert to a cult, but some did leave during the break.