Shen Yun Comes to Burlington: 5,000 Years of Culture in Two Hours

To represent “5000 Years of Culture” in a two-hour song-and-dance performance might seem daunting, but Shen Yun has made it seem effortless for the better part of the last two decades. Like clockwork, the organization’s touring ensembles cross the continents each year, plastering subway walls and shop windows with colorful posters that promise showgoers a peek at “China Before Communism.” As easy as it might be to ridicule Shen Yun (and people have), I must admit I’ve always found something charming about the production’s advertisements. With long flowing robes, bright visuals, and the promise of martial arts and deep love stories, Shen Yun always seemed to me like a strange mix of Star Wars and West Side Story. When I saw an advertisement for the company’s 2024 New England tour outside of Dunk’s, I couldn’t resist the urge to go.

As I entered the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in Burlington on Saturday, February 17, I found myself in a mysteriously diverse sea of people all waiting to see the “Beauty of Divine Beings Dancing,” as Shen Yun insists their name to mean. This was Burlington, and—having been several beverages in—the most I can remember of the 25 rows in front of me was white and gray. However, there were more than a handful of Asian-Americans in attendance at this 7 p.m. showing. 

Whether these were supporters of Shen Yun’s affiliated religious movement, Falun Dafa, I do not know. At the very least, this performance was likely the closest thing to traditional Chinese dance performance that anyone in Burlington could have expected that night. No one was complaining that this was supposed to be a postmodern drama.

The performance began right on time. The orchestra erupted in traditional Chinese melodies as the stage filled with silk-clad dancing girls (and guys). After several minutes of performance, centering on the dancers anticipating and celebrating the arrival by chariot of a divine, emperor-like figure, the curtains closed. A well-dressed white man arrived in the spotlight, flanked by a young Chinese woman. He explained what the audience could expect this evening—a veritable tour through the last 50 centuries of Chinese history, literature, and mythology. She followed him, in Mandarin. The two then introduced the next act.

The rest of the performance followed this pattern, as each sequence drove us another couple centuries into China’s history or into the world of another great novel of Chinese literature. One dance told the story of beautiful women in a courtyard, as their tufted dresses and parasols combined to form images of flowers. Another focused on the magical powers of Buddhist monk Ji Gong, who teaches a lecherous merchant and a scheming mother to leave an unwilling ‘bride’ alone. Some were quotidian yet mythopoetic: for example, when a magical fish taught a lousy student to study harder (cue the tiger parent jokes). 

Others were purely poetic, as when members of the troupe danced to showcase the “divine origin” of mortal beings. My personal favorite was a scene featuring the lazy cooks of an ancient Chinese restaurant as they face their biggest challenge yet: the health inspector. (Yes, even the woke Vermont audience let out a chuckle.)

If the program seems humorous, it was. Shen Yun’s attempts at humor reached far beyond the subject matter of its various dance sequences, as well. The masters of ceremonies kept a good repartee going for the entirety of the two-hour performance. The white man even once tried to supplant his Chinese counterpart by attempting to introduce the next act in Mandarin. All he got from her was a deadpan, “What did that mean?” Nevertheless, I did admire Shen Yun for not letting its ‘fun night out’ ethos distract from the more serious aspects of (recent) Chinese history.

Around halfway through the program, the MCs introduced a segment called something along the lines of “Crimes at the End of Days.” The sequence featured a girl and her brother, a committed member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and police officer. She discovers a copy of the Falun Dafa text Zhuan Falun and takes it home, to share with her family. When her brother finds out, the police arrest the sister. Thereafter, a corrupt doctor arrives to forcibly harvest the girl’s organs while in custody. Chastened and redeemed by the light of Zhuan Falun, the brother-cum-police officer returns home, where he reconciles with his mother and finds light in his new faith. The whole story concluded in less than ten minutes.

However bereft of symbolism “End of Days” might have been, the segment spoke of the dark story lingering behind Shen Yun’s colorful visuals, the smiles of its silk-clad dancers, and the various charms and tchotchkes at its gift shop. The performance might have been part of a world-famous and eminently memeable perennial tour, but it was also just one of several outreach mechanisms of a persecuted religious movement. 

Before 1999, the Chinese government estimated Falun Dafa practitioners, who engage in a syncretic mix of Buddhist and traditional Chinese spiritual practices taught by the now New York-based Li Hongzhi, in the tens of millions. Thereafter, the government announced a crackdown on the movement, and members experienced “widespread surveillance, arbitrary detention, horrific torture, and extrajudicial killing,” according to Freedom House. An expert panel even concluded in 2019 that these tortures included involuntary organ harvesting. And while the Department of State still estimates that up to 20 million Falun Dafa practitioners may persist in China, there is no doubt that the movement is on the fringes of Chinese society, with significant exile populations.

Shen Yun is meant not just to introduce international audiences to a highly commercialized and simplified view of Chinese history but also to educate viewers about a specific Falun Dafa-oriented view of it. In between the most rainbow-like dance sequences, the program found time for multiple solos featuring hymns from the movement. The earlier male soloist failed to hit his high note, and the later female artist couldn’t really sing in key, but the lyrics sang for themselves. I remember various barbs at modernism, “evolutionary theory,” and “atheism.” The subtext ran red with (justified) criticism of the CCP. In fact, the glorious view of Chinese history that Shen Yun tried to portray seemed itself to be a retort to the CCP’s claims of indispensability. If the dances are to be believed, “China Before Communism” was pretty damn nice. I’d take the Forbidden City over Shenzhen any day.

As students at one of America’s best colleges, it can be extraordinarily and temptingly easy to undo our belts, kneel down, and defecate on whatever arts offerings tend to make it to this corner of New England. After all, for every Dune featured at The Nugget, one can usually expect an Argylle. And for all of the Hop’s efforts, sometimes the pickings are just a bit anorexic. So when I looked at Shen Yun’s almost comedic over-advertising, I expected a bit more of the same. 

And was Shen Yun saccharine? Of course, it was. Although, I might call it “family-friendly,” sans the organ harvesting sequence. Was it on-the-nose? Sure. Was it particularly deep or artistic? Not at all. But was it beautiful? Yes. For all the criticism that self-proclaimed arbiters of art might lob at Shen Yun (just as they might look down on The Phantom of the Opera or any affordable and popular production), the show did highlight traditional Chinese art and dance. One segment even featured an erhu player so good that I thought she would get up and start fiddling “Dixie.” Shen Yun was a rollicking good time, though maybe a long time when the two-hour runtime is accounted for. And, not only that, it was a meaningful time. However little we might hear about Falun Dafa in this country’s discourse about China, we spend time with the members of that movement even less. In my evening with them that February 17, I may not have internalized exactly how “evolutionary theory” is killing the world, but I did learn again why the Chinese Communist Party might be one of the most evil institutions in existence. 

For me, at least, that was enough for a standing ovation.