I went to Shen Yun, and all I got was this fancy playbill (all photos by me)

An operatic soprano, introduced by the night’s chirpy emcee duo as Haolan Geng, took the stage at the tony David Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, accompanied by only a young woman pianist in a floor-length black gown. Geng’s precise, soaring vocals belonged at the Metropolitan Opera House just across the way as she bellowed a song with its translation projected behind her on a gigantic screen. With its ornate yet cartoonishly bubbly letters, the text looked like animated versions of dread-inducing woo-girl birthday balloons (Please don’t come into this bar!). These golden words slowly emerged over the rolling greenery and clear blue skies of an imagined paradise or a Windows 95 screensaver. The song began pleasantly enough: “Throughout our lives we anticipate most people are heavenly beings, incarnate.” A lovely if somewhat cracked sentiment. I feel heavenly, Haolan! “O’er past lives, the Creator did we await to rescue the universe and purify our state.” Ok…sure. “Harm is done onto us by modern thought.” Wait…where is this going? And what modern thought are we talking about here? Pump-and-dump shitcoin schemes? Cybertrucks? Electricity? Indoor plumbing? “Denial of God hath pestilence wrought.” This is getting a bit dark, Haolan. Then, the kicker, which blinked onto the screen the same as the rest but was made even more dramatic by the sheer force of the batshittery alone: “Atheism and evolution are Satan’s ruse.” Fucking yikes! What is this song, and what kind of show IS this?!

This was Shen Yun, the controversial, much-exposé-ed, inescapably advertised performance company. Sitting in the front row (on the side, mind you. I didn’t fork over $300 for Shen Yun), I shoved down a cackle, managing to eke out a soft snort—hopefully one as imperceptible as I intended as I was within observation distance of the stone-faced orchestra perfectly stiffly sitting, eyes trained straight ahead. I wish I could say I didn’t anticipate this kooky condemnation of atheism and evolution, that I didn’t spoil the alarming aria for myself by devouring Reddit thread after Reddit thread before attending the performance with this specific line almost universally mentioned. I wish I could lie and pretend I didn’t know it was coming. I did. In fact, I was buzzing all the way up to Lincoln Center thinking about it. Still, when those shiny gold words flashed onto the screen, I was shocked. Not because the sentiment is incompatible with our wholly rational thinking times. I’m not that much of a sheltered idealist. I also recently watched Alex Jones regale Tucker Carlson (who has his own nutto story about being scratched in his sleep by a demon—not his dog!) with a story about women in Austin being possessed by demons (sounds fun!). Yet, it’s not a phrase I’ve ever come across in my mostly secular performance viewings or one I would expect to be bellowed from the stage at Lincoln Center and swallowed without much loud, awkward jostling from the audience (at least that I noticed).

It’s not as if there wasn’t a diverse audience to potentially offend or at least provoke into a collective, cathartic gasp. The audience for my performance of Shen Yun was one of the oddest, most subdued crowds I’ve witnessed—a collection of people, none of whom seemed to belong together. In Jia Tolentino’s 2019 New Yorker essay about her own Shen Yun attendance, she pinpointed that year’s Lincoln Center crowd as “heavily Asian.” At first, this was also my experience when sitting in the lobby surrounded by petite, well-dressed, staunch Chinese grandmothers battling me for a seat on one of the two benches. However, this was only because grandmas like me get to the theater way too early. Once inside the full-to-the-brim theater, the crowd was stunningly varied. An older Black couple sat next to me. Families with children ran around the aisles. Seemingly every race and ethnicity were represented. This wasn’t just the Upper West Side snoots either. Some folks adhered to Shen Yun’s suggested evening or business attire dress code. Others looked like they strolled right in from a Walmart shopping spree. The demographics were so random that it seemed as if New York emptied its subway system into Lincoln Center for the night. We were all just taking this trip together.

Peering around, questions nagged: What the hell were all these people doing here? What convinced them to finally click buy on the overpriced Shen Yun tickets? Could it be the sheer ubiquity of all those Shen Yun ads? For anyone who exists in one of the seemingly bajillion cities in which the eight companies of Shen Yun perform, their advertisements cannot be avoided. You can try. You will fail. Shen Yun will find you. Take a walk down the street—you pass a bus shelter with its ad spot taken by a beautiful Chinese woman dancer leaping gracefully, her leg permanently posed in the air, wearing a flowy jewel-toned dress that matches the equally bright monochromatic background. She springs over the pervasive tagline: China Before Communism. While strolling farther, particularly in a crowded touristy hotspot, a friendly Chinese lady hands you a pamphlet. On it, the same woman hurls herself into the air. SHEN YUN. You return home and open YouTube to watch your favorite podcast. Before it starts, one of those annoying ads crops up. You hear the clamoring sound of a gong. A golden seal flies at your face, followed by a chariot drawn by white winged horses, while below, pretty ladies in colorful dresses swirl around in tandem. The narrator enthusiastically exclaims, “Heavenly beauty unfolds onstage! A lost civilization revived! Experience China’s 5000 years of wonder before Communism!” Oh shit, not again. SHEN YUN. You click “Skip ad.” At the next commercial break, another ad pops up—this time with camera-hungry goobers and unexpectedly Cate Blanchett at a theater, effusively gushing in front of a step-and-repeat about how a performance was uplifting, gorgeous, life-affirming, etc. What performance is that, you wonder? SHEN YUN. And this cycle will repeat, year after year after year. And now that you’ve read this article, I’ve spoken Shen Yun into existence for you, too. It has captured your algorithm. There’s no escape. Eventually, we will all give in and attend Shen Yun. I did. You will too. Don’t fight it.

And really, why would you want to? Certainly, I was morbidly curious. The details surrounding Shen Yun are enough for at least a four-episode cult docuseries, a binge-watching crowd-pleaser just waiting to be produced (What are filmmakers waiting for? What are they afraid of?). Shen Yun is run by *ahem* “new religious movement” Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa, a combo of meditation, qigong exercises, Buddhist and Taoist traditions, anti-evolution, anti-gay, anti-feminist, and other typical uber-conservative views, and the off-kilter teachings of its founder Li Hongzhi, who, according to NBC News, is understood as “a God-like figure who can levitate, walk through walls, and see into the future.” What future does he see? Aliens. In a Time Magazine interview that Li has since brushed off as metaphorical, he claimed that “aliens have introduced modern machinery like computers and airplanes” and will eventually, with advances in cloning, “replace the human soul and by doing so they will enter earth and become earthlings.” Exciting!

Though originating in China, the Chinese Communist Party banned Falun Gong in 1999, persecuting its members and leading many to flee the country and land, well, here. I remember first encountering Falun Gong in the early 2000s when members set up garish booths covered with posters of grotesque, harrowing imagery of torture and claims of the CCP harvesting organs from Falun Gong practitioners. At some point, the gore booths transformed into pretty lady dancers after Shen Yun’s founding in 2006. A relief, sure, but not without its own shadowy mystique. Shen Yun’s home base is a sequestered 427-acre Falun Gong compound called Dragon Springs, located just 60 miles outside of New York City in Deerpark, New York. The few photographs I found online, presumably taken from drones or someone at a comfortable distance, given their vehemently patrolled security entrance, are surreal enough to pique the imagination. Numerous buildings with traditional Tang Dynasty architecture clash with the natural landscape of upstate New York, reminiscent of the Rajneesh movement’s established commune, Rajneeshpuram, in Oregon, minus trucking in homeless people to sway local elections (so far). And like the denizens of that town, the Deerpark citizens have a tense relationship with Dragon Springs if the numerous lawsuits about building violations on the commune’s Wikipedia page are any indication. What goes on at Dragon Springs is anyone’s guess, though some of us with enough fixations on *cough* “new religious movements” probably have a few guesses as they all generally follow similar patterns (isolation, emotional manipulation, overworking, little eating or sleeping). In the past few years, there have been several exposés about Shen Yun, including a prominent New York Times investigation, as well as multiple follow-ups by the paper, like yesterday’s article about Shen Yun’s “army of child laborers.” These articles are filled with allegations of abusive working conditions, mistreatment of performers, including encouraging them to perform with serious injuries, and exploitatively puny pay. These accusations boiled over so much in late 2024 that the New York State Department of Labor opened an investigation.

Not that it’ll be easy. Try searching for information about Shen Yun. You won’t get too far without landing on a litany of laudatory articles in The Epoch Times, owned by, of course, Falun Gong. The Epoch Times, in particular, is a one-newspaper public relations firm for Shen Yun, producing a hilariously staggering and awe-inspiring 17,000 articles about the dance company between 2009 and 2024. I’m not even sure if that number counts the endless audience interviews on New Tang Dynasty (NTD) News, also run by, you guessed it, Falun Gong. It’s worth noting that reporters, presumably from one of the many Epoch publications, were working overtime after my Shen Yun performance, scurrying around the Lincoln Center plaza looking for more positive reviews and praise-y scoops.

Visions from my Shen Yun playbill

No matter how transportive the evening attempted to be, jetting the audience back through time to China Before Communism (!), all this information swirled through my mind like the thick, billowing clouds of dry ice that drifted through the air as soon as the Lincoln Center curtain rose, releasing the audience-choking puffs. Out of the mist, female dancers with their hair done up in stiff, twin knot buns like glamorous bug antennas, wrapped in quirky, clicky-clacky rhinestone hair jewels, popped their heads up, holding oversized hot pink fabric lotus blossoms. The men followed, hopping into the air and performing stomach-churning acrobatic flips and somersaults. As tightly choreographed and clearly impressively trained as the dancers were, I spent a lot of mental energy analyzing their visible health. Do they look fed? Do they look injured? Do they have cult eyes? Do they have a help-me look? Sad to say, I couldn’t delineate anything of note other than my squinting surprise that two dancers—a man and a woman—were white rather than Chinese. What is THEIR story?!

Even still, performing wellness checks was only a momentary folly. It was no match for the ascendant camp occurring on Shen Yun’s patented 3-D screen technology! Behind the candy-colored dancers, the monster screen featured, in transcendently wonky animation, various humanoid figures, presumably supposed to represent the dancers I just saw, zipping around the heavens in a color scheme I can only describe as Candy Crush. It felt like some kind of kitsch fever dream, like the delightfully fluorescent tchotchkes at Chinatown gewgaw stores came alive—and this was only the first dance in the marathon two-hour show. Yes, two hours, which, at some point, felt like a maddening endurance test. How much kitsch can you stand?

Turns out a lot, particularly when led through the saccharine neon landscape by the evening’s guides: a chipper white dude and a Chinese woman whose heavy eyelashes and eyemakeup weighed down her lids in beguiling and fascinating ways. Before each new number, this ever-present emcee duo would appear as if from thin air, introducing the performance in both English and Chinese. With a practiced, comfortable patter, they explained the history behind individual dances, the origins of costuming or various dance moves, the orchestra’s mix of Chinese and Western instruments, and the meaning behind the name Shen Yun (“The beauty of heavenly beings dancing”). However, what they said was less important than their charmingly schmoozy affects, particularly the surreally rigid way the duo would exit the stage with him holding his arm out for her to pass while she drifted dreamily on by like a beauty contestant. They left the stage this same way each and every time. Truly Lynchian.

As introduced by these two masters of ceremonies, Shen Yun’s various dances, each provided their own dramatic curtain raise (the curtain person at Lincoln Center must have a wallet full of overtime pay), ranged between classic gender-based dances like the women’s “water sleeves,” spinning around their elongated sleeves like ribbon dancers; dances associated with various ethnic traditions, including Tibetan and the Yi in southwest China; and, my favorite, little vignettes that ranged from the curiously eccentric to downright disturbing. Now, I am not a dance critic and have no idea whether Shen Yun’s choreography is accurate to classical Chinese dance. Jia Tolentino, in her New Yorker article, expressed skepticism about the claim that gymnastics actually borrowed its spectacular bodily distortions from thousands of years of Chinese tradition and quotes Emily Wilcox, a professor of Chinese studies, who said she “had never heard that before, no.” But to be honest, I don’t really care.

These performances were the filler for the real meat of the show anyway: the danced skits. The first was entitled “Pigsy Joins the Journey,” taking a tale from Journey to the West that includes a man-pig kidnapping a lady, a Buddhist monk and a “supernatural Monkey King” battling him alongside the Goddess of the Moon and her fairy friends (there are a lot of fairies in Shen Yun storylines), and Pigsy’s redemption. Did I understand the story precisely as it was written in the playbook? Not exactly. But with two fabric flaps as makeshift piggy ears and a nasty nature, Pigsy was clearly the antagonist while the others fought on the side of good. The most dynamic part of this dance was a trick that pervaded the rest of the show. Characters like Pigsy or the fairies would roll behind stepped risers, only to reappear on screen, flitting about the discount video game landscape. Sometimes, the reverse occurred with characters on screen disappearing, only to leap up behind the stairs. How’d they do that?! What at first is a cute folly rapidly becomes exhausted schtick by the end of the show as Shen Yun enacts this same trick over and over again through the other skits, which feature tales such as a romance between a village boy and a fairy (*wink wink*), a lighthearted goof about an old teacher who can still out-flip his students, a tipsy poet writing masterpieces, and a kickass lady restaurant owner battling assholes. Most stories featured a simplistic good vs. evil narrative, ending with a psychedelic Alex Grey-type enlightenment scene. Occasionally, though, a foreboding, gruesome darkness rolled in like the projection of bloodied corpses on a battlefield.

More visions from my Shen Yun playbill

These gestural morality plays reminded me less of the narratives within a plethora of other dance performances and more of the off-kilter skits performed by the Peoples Temple members at their services. Some of this could be the eerie lack of intuitive lighting changes. Throughout the performance, it was as if Shen Yun told the Lincoln Center lighting operators: Think flood lights. No matter what action occurred onstage, whether a focus on one dancer or a romantic duet, the lighting was the same eye-searingly bright wash with everything illuminated at once. Something about this production decision screams *cough* new religious movement. Despite being at Lincoln Center, this was commune aesthetics, much like the ones preserved in the California Historical Society’s Peoples Temple archives. Take a curious dive there and you’ll find numerous bewildering photographs with little context of the Peoples Temple performances in the years when they still inhabited California’s Redwood Valley before their doomed Jonestown jaunt (though I do believe Jonestown residents subjected Congressman Leo Ryan and his entourage to skits before his assassination. Which is the worst punishment? Hard to say!). According to Gone from the Promised Land, the Peoples Temple skits took on topics as varied and uncomfortable as “venereal disease, slavery, mental illness, the Ku Klux Klan, and concentration camps.” Fun for the whole family! Jonestown and skits troupe survivor Debbie Layton also describes her participation in these theatrical performances in her memoir Seductive Poison:

“I became a part of the ‘skits’ troupe, an elite group of individuals whose task was to put on performances explaining why capitalism was bad and socialism good. We made our points by spoofing the political system. Father explained that this was the “common man’s way” to educate the misinformed and ignorant. After each Family Teach-in performance, Jim came and applauded my ability to grasp the Cause’s doctrine and to communicate it to the congregation.”

I realize the Peoples Temple and Shen Yun sit on opposite sides of the socialism debate. Trust me. Though Shen Yun seems to have toned down some of their anti-commie proselytizing since Jia Tolentino’s visit when she remarked upon spooky representations of Karl Marx and Mao (a pity!), Shen Yun’s distaste for the CCP was, uh, not subtle given their two most distressing dances set in contemporary China, which narrated the persecuted plight of Falun Gong practitioners. The first dance, “Unprecedented Crime,” imagined Falun Gong practitioners meditating and studying in the public square, each sporting vivid yellow and blue uniforms emblazoned with the symbols for truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. One practitioner—a man—was dragged away from his wedding by CCP goons, identified by their all-black outfits, bad attitudes, and red hammer and sickle symbols, and shoved into a torture prison, represented by cheery animated cement block walls covered in a splatter of blood and chunks of flesh. Grim! You haven’t truly lived unless you’ve seen cattle prod torture rendered through spritely choreography! I’m sure the kids loved it! After a satisfactory amount of cruelty, this poor wretch emerged from the prison with both eyes bandaged (did they steal his eyeballs?). Stumbling through the streets, he found his fellow Falun Gong practitioners again. And, with their help and the love from his fiancée, he could see again! A deeply disturbed miracle! Amusingly, this performance was followed by the traditional Men’s Tibetan Dance right before intermission, presumably so the audience didn’t spend the entire break waiting in the wine line wondering if we just got indoctrinated (we did).

The second contemporary dance was quite appropriately the evening’s closer. “The Creator Has Arrived” featured a view of a street in China filled with CCP goons, thugs, and various other miscreants. One of the goons had a touch more humanity than the others, helping some Falun Gong practitioners, and was rewarded by being run over by a car (or something). He writhed on the ground to the nonchalance of his former buddies, who ignored his pleas. You can probably guess who came to his aid, though…that’s right—Falun Gong! In the same duo-chromatic clothing, the Falun Dafa folks helped him shuffle up on his shattered leg and taught him how to practice meditation, which heals him. Who needs surgery! At the end of this performance, a celestial being—an older man who was not in the rest of the performance—appeared to a soaring heavenly orchestral swell and rippling animation. Who the hell was that?! The Creator?! Li Hongzhi?!

Proof of disappointingly tasteful merch

Despite my general confusion over some of the symbolism, these narratives were constructed for American dunces like me. Even if I didn’t get all of the facets of the storyline, I understood enough to see that they were designed to forge identification with Falun Gong and hatred for the evil CCP, much like the Peoples Temple skits sought to “cultivate a ‘patriotic’ identification with the Peoples Temple.” Did it work? I don’t know. What didn’t work, though, was the merch. With all the enticing sparkling, glittering, cloying costuming, one would have assumed that Shen Yun’s merch would be gewgaw galore. A tchotchke a-go-go! Not so much. It was, dare I say, classy! The horror! Fancy little metal bookmarks, elegant necklaces, subtly nature-printed scarves. The closest to tasteless was a royal purple sweater with Star Trek shoulders. But that didn’t satisfy (though the conversation with the saleswoman did, as she mentioned she used to live in Manhattan. Well, honey, where do you live now? Dragon Springs? Tell me more!). Listen, I have ideas: What about a postcard of Pigsy?! A shoddy snow globe featuring all the various characters flitting around the skies! What about a music box with a wobbly, poorly painted Shen Yun dancer?! Or the item I truly desire—a T-shirt printed with the golden phrase: “Atheism and evolution are Satan’s ruse.” I would have bought that immediately, no matter the cost. Oh, well, maybe next year.