Shen Yun is a dance and music present that performs at a few of the nation’s most extravagant theater venues.
It has toured the U.S. since not less than 2011, and simply launched its nationwide tour schedule for 2025.
So incessantly do People hear about Shen Yun by way of its mass promotional mailings, billboards or social media adverts that there are memes and jokes about whether or not anybody actually sees it.
On first receiving the mailing in 2013, I crumpled it up. “Commie propaganda,” I assumed.
Seeing an internet video commercial for Shen Yun, I assumed “Yeah, good acrobatic dance and costumes, however how did I get focused?”
It seems I used to be incorrect about Shen Yun.
Not solely is it not pro-Chinese language Communist Get together, Shen Yun is a celebration of what was earlier than Mao, and is a gadfly on the present Chinese language regime. The performances use the free expression of artwork to remind us of the losses the CCP has price.
To then discover out that the highest supporters of Shen Yun additionally assist The Epoch Occasions, members of a company known as Falun Gong, made extra sense.
To ask a Democrat hardcore activist, Falun Gong isn’t any extra respectable than American Christianity. This helps quickly orient one in the precise course.
Falun Gong is a banned religious follow in trendy China that has 70 million adherents or extra. After having skilled 26 years of persecution, practitioners of Falun Gong acknowledge a spirit above the chairman’s place of the Chinese language Communist Get together.
The CCP continues to look furtively at Falun Gong, although President Xi’s modified line of assault seems to deal with personally besmirching the founder, Li Hongzhi.
Falun Gong emerged out of the traditional Qi Gong custom inside mainland China within the Nineties. To the minds of Falun Gong practitioners, divine life vitality, or Qi, is out there to move to everybody no matter partisan loyalties.
After violent authorities assaults, members realized {that a} principled character requires a cultural, social and spiritual motion to be born and grown that won’t abide the CCP’s totalitarian viewpoint.
Estimates say not less than 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners have been executed by the Chinese language Authorities because the faith was formally banned in 1999. Expenses of torture and organ harvesting in opposition to practitioners have been made and instances dropped at gentle.
The current headquarters of Falun Gong is in upstate New York, although many practitioners stay in China. Hongzhi escaped China to stay in upstate N.Y., and is revered for linking the embodied religious expertise to a company that stands its floor in opposition to communist growth.
Simply as one factor you’ll be able to say concerning the Falun Gong-founded Epoch Occasions is that its stances are principled. One remark you may make about Shen Yun is that its passionate leaps and bounds are athletically exact.
A lawsuit concentrating on @ShenYun is elevating critical questions on Chinese language communist affect right here on American soil. pic.twitter.com/p2uEeMywzL
— EpochTV (@EpochTV) December 9, 2024
Coaching and rehearsals for the Shen Yun efficiency season happen on the upstate NY heart as properly. Performer pay and maintenance of the 427-acre facility are the main expenditures of the Shen Yun Basis.
In different phrases, that’s the place your ticket worth goes.
However let’s be trustworthy–when TV sequence, film leases, anime, comedy and replays of nearly all the pieces are on-line, solely a small fraction of People purchase tickets to stay dance and classical orchestras.
(That every one modified for me, since I married a classical dancer. Certain, I fell asleep at my first symphony as an grownup, with all of the harmonies and the snug chairs, however stay classical performances have actually grown on me.)
We miss venues resonating with devices and well-trained dancers’ toes echoing easily throughout hardwood flooring.
The dancing in Shen Yun is classical Chinese language, not “ballet.” But the model, like all that’s really classical, attracts out the sinews of evocative capability that the human physique, thoughts and spirit have to supply the center.
There may be good toe balancing, strolling “on air” gracefully and an ascending heart of gravity throughout jumps whereas additionally someway conserving that heart of gravity, all in spades of rhythm!
Shen Yun doesn’t begrudge the West; it’s about classical friendship full of virtues equivalent to religion and divine love and knowledge. The narrative of the dance efficiency is that these virtues shine by way of 5,000 years, solely to be carelessly halted by the continued atheist communist interval and spiritual oppression in China.
There are studies that China banned not simply affiliation with Falun Gong, however all public gatherings of Qi Gong. Apparently, the Chinese language folks must follow Qi Gong in an accepted housing unit or constructing.
With China repressing religious follow in park areas of their large cities, American media critics ought to–however gained’t–cease mocking Falun Gong, simply as does the CCP. A number of the accusations are extra critical, with firm officers denying the studies in query.
The acclaimed world present faces allegations of working as a pressured labor enterprise. The dance firm is refuting these claims.
https://t.co/yckyGlo77V— KTNV | Channel 13 Information Las Vegas (@KTNV) January 23, 2025
The Bible says this age won’t final perpetually. The folks will, within the remaining say, get to glorify the Holy Spirit, and sing out a brand new tune to the God who created us. Folks will likely be judged as to whether or not they constructed and rang that liberty bell or slandered and hindered those that aspire.
In China the “official” Bible is closely edited to hate Jesus Christ and glorify the state solely, whereas The Epoch Occasions takes the facet of Christian custom.
Shen Yun appears to be a candid efficiency concerning the enduring urge for the Holy Spirit. By providing a Falun Gong-based efficiency in nations of Christian audiences with out the slightest smear on Christian religion, it’s doing an trustworthy factor: expressing the need for God in a approach that speaks for the folks in China.
Even the motto, “5,000 years of civilization, reborn” sounds open to the Gospel.
Certainly, Hongzhi writes affectionately concerning the Christian interval of historical past and its significance at the moment. It may well appear as if Falun Gong is exploring Christianity with out giving up sure key cultural and way of life elements.
Discerning the precise strategy to what’s syncretism and what’s, relatively, residing by the Holy Spirit within the lands the place the apostles traveled, was and is a part of wealthy conversations within the E-book of Acts and different epistles. Maybe an enormous religious awakening to Christ will span the Pacific Rim; possibly it’s taking place now.
Except for the visible, spatial and audio great thing about the present itself, you might need seen the mini-interviews with celebrities and politicians’ which can be Shen Yun’s predominant promoting belongings.
Frankly, amid liberty’s travails overseas and in America, “promoting” as as to if to see and assist a present like Shen Yun comes from the Spirit. The Gospel of Mark says:
Once they arrest you and hand you over, don’t worry beforehand about what you’re to say, however say no matter is given you in that hour; for it isn’t you who communicate, however it’s the Holy Spirit.
Falun Gong members, like many Christians, face arrest and full reliance on the Holy Spirit, proper now. Each take coronary heart from understanding:
We have no idea the right way to pray as we should always, however the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for phrases; and He who searches the hearts is aware of what the thoughts of the Spirit is.
(Romans 8:26-27)
And understanding:
“For it appeared good to the Holy Spirit and to us to put upon you no better burden than these necessities
(Acts 15:28)
A Shen Yun efficiency is searchable by metropolis, state, or ZIP through its website.