We Went to Shen Yun So You Don't Have To

A Shen Yun billboard in the Bronx

The Shen Yun show is a relentless, ubiquitous, and unavoidable marketing force, especially in any city where one of their eight companies are performing. I love many kinds of live shows, and have long been curious about this, but–ethically–could I go? I knew that Falun Gong (aka Falun Dafa), which produces and uses Shen Yun as a fundraising machine, was problematic (to say the least), but I didn’t really research it thoroughly until after buying tickets; in hindsight, this was unfortunate (see below). In the end, we decided to go, since Shen Yun and Falun Gong won’t be affected in any way by me buying a ticket or not—they are still going to take in millions and millions of dollars this year and likely for many more. And, after seeing the show, I think the service I can provide is to tell you that I cannot recommend the show, and not only because of the sketchiness and secrecy around Falun Gong and the way the Shen Yun company members are treated, but also because it’s just not a good show.  

Background

Falun Gong was started in the early 1990s by Li Hongzhi and the religious movement was persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party, which is obviously horrible and tragic; given this history, Falun Gong/Shen Yun could be a sympathetic cause. But they responded to persecution with so much secrecy and aggressive propaganda that it all makes it extremely difficult to empathize with or support them.  Shen Yun company members live with Li himself (apparently) and hundreds of Falun Gong members at the secretive, 400+ acre, fortress-like “Dragon Springs” compound near Cuddebackville, NY, about 50 miles northwest of Lincoln Center, where they perform every spring here in NYC. The religious (tax exempt) compound is not open to the public, and there is a high security checkpoint on the single entrance road. The complex is surrounded on all sides by steep hills and a creek and in many places a stone wall; it’s very hard for outsiders to have any idea what’s going on inside, and neighbors have been complaining about the secretive organization for decades. Falun Gong says this is all necessary because of ongoing Chinese Communist Party harassment, but they have so muddied the waters with propaganda (any search takes you through rings of sponsored content and sympathetic websites by people connected to the organization) that it’s hard to get to the truth.  But in recent years, information has been getting out about how the Shen Yun company members and Falun Gong practitioners are treated, and it’s far from the happy shiny image you see in their commercials. As I was writing this, the NY Times released, “An ‘Army of Child Laborers’ Enriches Shen Yun, Ex-Dancers Say in Suit” (gift link), and here’s a detailed piece from late last year, “How Shen Yun Tapped Religious Fervor to Make $266 Million” (gift link).  And, finally, here’s a great explainer video from my old friend Rebecca Watson, “The Dangerous Cult Behind the Shen Yun Theatrical Show”

The Show

Two friends and I went to see Shen Yun at the David H. Koch (yes, that one) theater at Lincoln Center on the afternoon of Wednesday April 9. Of course, the lobby was full of Shen Yun and Falun Gong merch and info tables, and the pre show email said, “Please plan on arriving at least 45 minutes before the show time. Performances start right on time—it is one whole experience and you won’t want to miss the opening piece!”. Luckily, we ignored the email because they didn’t open the house until about 15 minutes before curtain (likely to force people to spend more time at the tables).

After we were seated, the Koch’s professional usher staff came around and told us that the production was very strict about not recording anything during the show. This is pretty standard for many shows these days (and for good reason, to prevent distraction), but, surprisingly, where we were seated in the cheapest seats on the upper-most level, we were also accompanied throughout the performance by two (apparently) Falun Gong/Shen Yun minders with earpieces who watched our every move (although they missed the guy in front of me who made an audio recording of about half the show). I was told too by a friend that during the entire Shen Yun run, the usual public Lincoln Center Tours are not even allowed in the Koch theater building, which is one of the three largest venues in Lincoln Center.  

The performance consisted of around 20 pieces accompanied by a live orchestra, made up of mostly traditional orchestral instruments, along with a couple Chinese specialties. The orchestra was relatively small by classical standards (I didn’t count, but the orchestra pit looked pretty roomy) but was solid and tight. Most of the show is made up of dance pieces, often based around an athletic performance style incorporating acrobatic moves; the collective precision of the dancers was amazing. But while I’m not really a connoisseur, the dances–while impressive–got somewhat repetitive to me (and of course I should make clear that any criticism I have is directed at the group leadership, not the company members or performers).

The show started with “A New Era Begins”, a pretty traditional dance number, which “heralds the arrival of the creator”, according to the program.  Between the numbers a pair of emcees addresses the audience–one in English and the other in Chinese–about each piece and sets up the next act. Jared Madsen was the English speaker for our performance; he also acts in the media as a sort of English speaking, front-facing spokesperson for the Falun Gong/Shen Yun (it sounds like his voice in the NY-area marketing: “See it at least once in your lifetime!”). Things progress along, telling the story of how wonderful everything was in China before communism with occasional “whimsical” detours (some drawn from Journey to the West) but as the show progresses, the propaganda gets more and more overt, and the whole show gets much darker.

We eventually reach the “Unprecedented Crime” scene which, according to the program, “...begins in a sunny park, where a group of people sit down to meditate and read a golden book.”  Eventually, “a young couple is forced apart on their wedding day, as the husband is dragged away to prison. Despite beatings and torture, he refuses to renounce his faith. He is eventually released, a broken man…”  If I remember right, it was in this scene that the character was blinded by his captors. I could be wrong, since the blinding is not in the program synopsis, and obviously these scenes are not in any of the upbeat marketing videos I saw for the show (they do have a paid video library if you’re interested). In a later scene, “The Way of Dafa Is Now Taught”, the dancers get a break, and we get a tenor and pianist. They do a number, with lyrics projected on the big screen like, “... atheism and evolution are doctrines of the Devil”. Afterwards, we are treated to another dance number, and then it’s intermission.

The second act starts (of course) with a couple more dance numbers, including a very confusing piece about a poet writing a story about the imperial concubine (kid-friendly content too!) and another about how a female restaurant owner does “kung fu” to protect her noodle shop. Again, the performers were amazing, but after you’ve seen the same (incredible) spinning move 10 times, it starts to get repetitive. Later, we get another musical interlude, “With Our Lives We Await”, which includes the (again projected) lyrics in case anyone missed the point in the first act: “Harm is done unto us by modern thought, Denial of God hath pestilence wrought, Atheism and evolution are Satan's ruse…”  

This all leads up to the big finale, “The Creator has Arrived”, during which, according to the program synopsis the, “… story returns us to modern-day China, where zealous young nationalists, mockingly known as "Little Pinks" (xiao fen hong), have thoroughly bought into the Party's doctrine. But after events quickly lead one of them to a clear-eyed view of the world, he encounters Falun Dafa practitioners. Finding his way back to tradition and kindness, he discovers a new sense of hope-and not a moment too soon.” As I remember it (again, not in the program synopsis), somewhere along in here is when the previously-blinded Falun Gong practitioner regains his sight, of course thanks to his faith. And for this final scene, the “creator” is played by an older gentleman, who looked to me remarkably like Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi. The “creator” stands upstage with a large projection radiating out from his head and the whole company facing upstage, adoringly, towards him. This is the completion of the story arc, such as it is.  “See you next year!”, Mr. Madsen said from the stage to close things out; uh, no you won’t.

The Production

I’m a production guy, so my perspective is invariably informed by 40+ years working on hundreds of shows. Everything in the Shen Yun performance we saw was done in front of a large projection screen with three rows of steps in front, with front projectors (you can see in the photo above–they had Chinese characters written on the top of the projectors so I assume they are owned by the production) displaying pretty high res imagery that looks like it’s straight out of a video gaming engine like Unity or Unreal. (As a show control geek, I’d be interested to know how they synchronized the video to the orchestra/dancers–typically this would be done by be something like a metronome-like click track sent from the video to the conductor’s ear). The steps were really the only physical production elements in the show aside from a few hand props. The costumes were colorful and looked fine to me, but my more discerning friend, looking through binoculars, questioned their quality.  

The steps were not lit well, presumably so as not to wash out the front projection screen (an LED wall would obviously be an improvement). So when performers were there, they were mostly illuminated by washover from the projected imagery. There seemed to be basically two light cues in the show: on and off. “On” was a single full stage, very bright wash cue that included enough side lighting to make the dancers “pop”.  Even in the two musical interludes where it was just a piano and a soloist, a full-stage wash look was used. This is one of many places the show could have really benefited from the contributions of professional designers (no designers were credited in the program).  

One geeky lighting thing I will give them credit for was the control of the orchestra pit lights. When I worked at the Metropolitan Opera a couple decades ago, one pet peeve that I always had was that the spill from the orchestra pit music stand lights was so bright that it would illuminate the curtain and the stage, often affecting the staging. At the Met, which works in rotating rep, this was pretty unavoidable since the musicians often play two long operas in a single day, and the illumination of the score sheets is a big deal. But in Shen Yun, the disciplined orchestra started playing in the dark (only the conductor had their stand light on), and then the pit music stand lights would fade up after the bright stage wash cue returned.

The sound was perfunctory and effective, with a few sound cues from the video, and the soloists miced using old-school foot mics. From where I was sitting, I couldn’t see mics in the pit, (the Koch was built for dance with a live orchestra) but there clearly was some additional playback since–strangely–during the curtain call and walk out after the show, music could be heard but the orchestra was not playing.

Patented “3D” Video Effect

As I mentioned above, in front of the upstage screen there is a stage-wide row of three steps, with an obvious gap between the screen and the steps (obvious, at least, from our balcony seats, and I assume they didn’t sell the levels above for sightline reasons).  Performers would jump behind these steps and then “fly” away as avatars on the video screen. The first time they did this effect, it was impressive. But then they did what no experienced director/creative team would ever do–use the effect again and again to the point that it became comic. Over and over throughout the show, the amazingly acrobatic performers ran up and jumped behind the steps, and then their avatars appeared in the video (again, think video game) and then flew off into space, or onto a cloud, or off to see the “creator”. Or vice-versa: the avatars would fly on the screen to set locations of the pre-positioned dancers behind the steps, who would then leap over towards the audience for their entrance. The motion is jarring, since the performers are jumping the opposite direction from the avatars, as if the other side of the screen–in the virtual world–was bounded by virtual trampolines. And on a big professional stage like this–especially with such acrobatic performers–it was kind of surprising to me they didn’t do any actual performer flying.  That’s pretty straightforward to do these days.

In the program this effect is explained as “A Shen Yun innovation creates seamless interaction between projection and performers on stage-an invention so original it has its own patent.”  They listed two patents; so, of course I looked them up (you can read them here by entering the patent numbers).

Patent 9468860 System and method for integrating digital background with stage performance explains:

“The discovery disclosed here is that the appearance and movement of images of actors can be integrated and/or coordinated with movements of live actors on a stage in a way that the images appear, to an audience, as lifelike extensions of the live actors. Projection screens or video display panels are used as a stage backdrop to display images of actors. Appearance and movement of the images on the screen or panel displays is coordinated with appearance and movement of live actors on the stage platform such that movement of the images appears as an extension of the movement of the actors. There is a transitioning between images on the stage backdrop and actors on the stage platform and/or between actors on the stage platform and images on the stage backdrop. The transitioning, and coordination of the movements of the images and actors, and/or of the actors and images, before and after the transitioning, expands the apparent range of movement of actors during a stage performance. This disclosure describes systems and methods for integrating a digital background with a stage performance.”

And patent 10981078 Methods for a stage performance states:

“Herein, new techniques for transitioning between actors on a stage platform and images of actors on a stage backdrop, or between images of actors on a stage backdrop and actors on a stage platform, are disclosed. This transport generally involves use of a prop and/or images of props during the transitioning. The techniques disclosed here may be perceived by an audience as an actor being transported over significant distances as an actor transitions from a stage platform to an image of the same actor on a stage backdrop, or as an image of an actor transitions from a stage backdrop to the live actor on a stage platform. In some examples, the techniques disclosed, that transport actors, here may be perceived by an audience as an actor not having moved from one location to another, but as the actor located in the same location, but the audience having a different viewpoint of the location and/or actor.”

The sole inventor of both patents is listed as “Li, Hongzhi (Cuddebackville, NY)”; of course that’s the Falun Gong founder, and Cuddebackville is the location of the secretive Dragon Springs Falun Gong/Shen Yun compound. Patents often have co-inventors, but I guess in this case Li thought up the whole thing by himself.  

It’s worth keeping in mind that the basic idea of a US patent is that they are supposed to be granted only for novel inventions, and one of the basic tests for novelty is, “....if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains.”  (from the patent office website more on Wikipedia here )

One long-extant issue with our US patent system (which I wrote about in the 1990s for Lighting Dimensions) is that for a niche industry like ours, it’s not likely that a patent examiner would be fully aware of hundreds of years of show production technology history; that’s a lot of (often not well documented) prior art. And if no one in the know sees a patent filing and challenges it with prior art, the examiner will generally grant the patent.  

A diagram from one of Li’s patents

To me, as someone with “ordinary skill in the art” after 40+ years working on shows, the idea described of jumping behind a platform or prop and then appearing on a video would be pretty obvious (although, honestly, I didn’t have time to carefully read every minute detail of the patent so I could be missing something).  But whether or not there is prior art no longer matters; with the patents granted, Shen Yun/Falun Gong can sue anyone they believe infringes, and anyone who is sued would then have to either settle or go through the significant expense of challenging the patent in court. But in the end, I don’t think any of that is likely or a worthwhile effort; the effect just really isn’t that good.  

After The Show

In the lobby after the show many (apparent) Falun Gong members came around—audio recorders in hand—asking everyone how they liked the show; others directed people to a video station to record testimonials. None of us really liked the show so, obviously, we declined, but I did ask one of the Falun Gong volunteers in the lobby if that was Mr. Li Hongzhi himself playing the “creator”, since he apparently lives only a couple hours away upstate. I confused her a bit, but eventually she said Li wasn’t there that day, and then immediately asked how I liked the show. I told her I didn’t agree with the song lyrics about evolution and atheism. Then my friend, who works in the circus, said they would have appreciated some juggling as part of the show, especially since China has a long history of stunning circus performances. And then my other friend said that they were a witch and really was more into goddesses than gods.  So I’m sure this volunteer had to file an interesting report that afternoon.

So in the end, for all of these reasons–ethical and performance related–I do not recommend Shen Yun.  If you want to see some beautiful dance with a live orchestra, the New York City Ballet is performing in the same building this spring, and tickets cost about the same as Shen Yun.