Shen Yun Performing Arts

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Shen Yun Performing Arts

The spectacle-rich Chinese dance troupe Shen Yun has made annual stops in the Triangle in recent years, staging sumptuous pageants in eye-popping traditional costumes to a live Chinese orchestra. An article last December in London’s The Guardian links the touring company with Falun Gong, an organized spiritual practice banned by the Chinese government in 1999. (The practice is also known as Falun Dafa; according to Shen Yun’s website, the Raleigh performances are presented by the North Carolina Falun Dafa Organization.) That schism is noted on the company’s own website, which claims that Chinese belief in a divinely inspired culture “endured five millennia, until the Chinese Communist Party seized power some sixty years ago.” Shen Yun’s revival of authentic music and dance counters an “atheist regime” that “has sought to destroy all remnants of China’s cultural and spiritual heritage.” Small wonder the The Guardian concluded that Shen Yun fights for “the hearts and minds of Westerners and overseas Chinese … one ribbon dance at a time.” —Byron Woods