Major Shen Yun Exposé: Dancers Not Allowed to Get Treated for Medical Injuries, Paid Only $12,000 a Year
SFist/August 16, 2024
By Joe Kukura
The NY Times just dropped a massive exposé on our favorite butt of jokes Shen Yun, but there’s nothing funny about the fact that the troupe is sitting on more than $250 million, while paying its dancers $12,000 a year and forbidding them from getting medical treatment.
This year’s new crop of the ubiquitous Shen Yun ads has not started to blanket San Francisco yet, but they probably will any day now. After all, Shen Yun 2025 arrives in San Jose December 26-30 2024, and then hits Berkeley January 10-12, 2025. And it’s not really news that Shen Yun is the propaganda show for the cultish mystic group Falun Gong, and somewhat financed by the shady pro-Trump Chinese-American newspaper Epoch Times.
But the New York Times just published a lengthy, nearly 5,000-word exposé on the Shen Yun production, speaking to 25 former dancers and musicians from the show, and digging into the production’s business records. They found that Shen Yun has amassed a fortune of about $265 million with their show tickets that can run more than $300 (they’re $229 for the San Jose show). But the Times also found the show “treated many of its performers as an expendable commodity,” and paid them peanuts — if they even paid them at all.
Shen Yun started in 2006, and did not play in San Francisco that year, with shows only in New York City, Paris, and Toronto. But it did come to San Francisco the following year, under the not-exactly catchy name New Tang Dynasty Television Chinese New Year Spectacular. (SFist actually attended a show!) It was renamed Shen Yun in 2009, and there are actually three different traveling Shen Yun groups that put on live performances across the globe.
All of the dancers and musicians are carefully trained at the secretive 400-acre compound in upstate New York of 73-year-old Falun Gong spiritual leader Li Hongzhi, who bills himself as “creator of the universe.” Future performers are sent there at ages of 12 years old or younger, and taught that, in the Times’ words, “any mistakes onstage might eventually doom their audiences to hell.” So there is some pressure on these kids there.
Once trained, dancers and musicians told the Times they were forced to work 15-hour days, and even made to set up and break down equipment while the show was on tour. Doesn’t sound like a union show. Moreover, the Times says that they were often “performing through dislocated kneecaps, sprained ankles or other serious injuries,” because Hongzhi’s teachings discourage Western medical care.
“If I ask for the hospital, I will be labeled as not a fervent believer,” former Shen Yun dancer Kate Huang told the Times. “I didn’t want to stick out or become a target of everyone.”
Dancers also said they encountered cruel torture to keep them thin, many of them developing eating disorders, and the production took control over their dating lives. Many said they were forced into relationships for visa purposes.
And they also said they weren’t paid at all during their first years performing with the troupe. Performers would only start getting paid in their early- to mid-20s, and then would only get about $12,000 a year.
“The amount of money we were making them, and also saving them, was pretty ludicrous,” a former Shen Yun violin player said to the paper. “At the time, I definitely was very concerned about the fact that we were getting nothing, and they were getting lots of money.”
Shen Yun responded to the Times with a statement saying “The program is legal, transparent and a highly sought-after opportunity for aspiring artists,” and that “The stipend that students receive while on practicum is an industry standard practice.”
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