SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

‘It’s Heaven Meets Earth in Shen Yun’: Think Tank Director

Feb 28, 2025

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Nina Shea, senior fellow and director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Hudson Institute, has seen Shen Yun Performing Arts several times and always enjoys “every minute of it.”

“It’s just dazzling to the senses, all the senses, and really enlightening to the mind, to the soul,” Ms. Shea said at the Kennedy Center on Feb. 28. “It was just a wonderful experience.”

New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company. Through music and dance, Shen Yun aims to revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilization, sharing with audiences the beauty of China before communism.

“I’ve seen it before. This is completely different,” she said, referring to the all-new production Shen Yun creates every year. “And the dance, the stories, the legends, the historical accounts of the dance and the traditions, it’s just wonderful and eye-opening. I loved every minute of it. It was entertaining.”

“It’s a wonderful combination of different traditions, cultures, art, and music—East and West. And yet there’s that core of spirituality to it as well. So, I thought it was very inspirational,” Ms. Shea said.

She felt the connection to the divine was a core theme of the performance and an inspirational one.

“I think it brings in the divine and a better world and something of hope, real hope for all of us. And, you know, hope of forgiveness, beauty, kindness, and love,” she said.

“The theme is beauty on earth is brought from divine inspiration. It’s divinely sent, and it’s an expression of the divine world and when there’s evil here, there’s hope for divine redemption,” she said.

Shen Yun had created this connection in a unique way in its production, she added.

“It’s really marvelous. It’s like a beautiful picture. Marvelous. The whole depiction of the divine and the abstract, it’s heaven meets earth in Shen Yun,” she said.

“Dance and the 3-D technology is just amazing. The synchronization of the being from on high in the background to jumping up on stage it was fabulous. It was really just amazing,“ she said. ”I hope everybody can see it because I’ve never seen anything quite like it, and there’s no other performing arts that I’ve seen that combines all of that.”

First Amendment Rights

Shen Yun’s display of divinely inspired culture was not the only thing Ms. Shea found eye-opening. The program also contained a story-based dance that exposed the “very, very disturbing” human rights violations of the Chinese communist regime, she added.

“I think it’s important that that story be told of the persecution. It’s sad, but yet it’s a very uplifting, overall uplifting show,” Ms. Shea said.

As an international human rights lawyer and expert, Ms. Shea has deep knowledge of the Chinese communist regime’s human rights abuses, which extend overseas to target political dissidents and religious groups such as Falun Gong—and groups founded by Falun Gong practitioners like Shen Yun.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice that teaches the three principles of truth, compassion, and tolerance. Since 1999, the Chinese communist regime has undertaken a massive and violent persecution against practitioners of Falun Gong, and Shen Yun has documented attacks and harassment believed to be linked to the Chinese Communist Party for almost two decades now.

Most recently, a false bomb threat was called into The Kennedy Center the day Shen Yun was set to open in the nation’s capital, and Ms. Shea said there should be an investigation.

“We have to try to stop the stream of constant harassment, even here in the United States, that’s the reason why we’re here in the United States. We’re here in the United States and I think that there has to be a true investigation of this, because it’s happening not just here, but other places as well, and there’s all sorts of examples of lawsuits, lawfare, harassment, and even bribery involved with government officials against Falun Gong,” she explained.

“It has to stop, the United States has to take this seriously,” she said.

There have already been many cases on U.S. soil showing that the Chinese communist regime is carrying out its religious persecution in America.

“There have been convictions, there have been confessions, and according to the Department of Justice, it’s directed and financed by the government of China, in our country, in the United States, and it’s a violation of the First Amendment of freedom of religion, freedom of expression, due process, rule of law,” she said.

“And it’s a threat to all Americans when communities of religious people, like Falun Gong, are threatened, harassed, and attacked in this way,” she added. “It has to stop.”

Reporting by Sherry Dong and Catherine Yang.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.