Shen Yun Calls for Investigation Following Bomb Threat at Kennedy Center

The arts group vows to keep going despite intimidation.

Shen Yun Performing Arts MC Leeshai Lemish speaks during a press conference over the recent fake bomb threat targeting the company at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, at the National Press Club in Washington on Feb. 21, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

WASHINGTON—Shen Yun Performing Arts is calling for an investigation a day after a bomb threat prompted an evacuation of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on the group’s opening night.

It was the latest in a litany of threats the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company has faced over the past year as it sets off on a global tour to showcase what it describes as “China before communism.”

Numerous emails, many of them in Chinese, have been adopting an increasingly provocative tone, threatening violence toward theater, the arts group’s New York headquarters, and lately, lawmakers and officials.

“It’s basically targeting the entire U.S. government, society, and everything that we stand for,” Leeshai Lemish, master of ceremonies for Shen Yun, told The Epoch Times.

Lemish called on the U.S. government to “investigate this thoroughly, to really try to find out who is behind this.”

“If it doesn’t stop with Shen Yun, it won’t stop with somebody else. They'll continue on,” he said. “It’s [going to be] an increasing problem until we do something about it.”

Shen Yun was setting up for its first of a week of performances in Washington when the fire alarm went off.

Alice Liu, a Shen Yun percussionist who has been with the company for 16 years, said she didn’t have time to grab her coat before everyone was ushered out of the building. They waited for about three hours as police and canine units screened the vicinity. Nothing hazardous was found.

“While I was waiting outside in the cold, I was thinking, ‘Wow, like anyone would dare to send a bomb threat to a performing arts venue that’s basically the national cultural center of the U.S.,’” she said at a Feb. 21 press conference at the National Press Club responding to the threat campaign.

Shen Yun Performing Arts percussionist Alice Liu speaks during a press conference over the recent fake bomb threat targeting the company at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, at the National Press Club in Washington on Feb. 21, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The Feb. 20 show proceeded smoothly after the police cleared the scene. The theater has increased security, installing metal detectors at the entrance as a precaution.

Shen Yun said it believes the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is behind the threats.

The CCP has for years been trying to stop the group from performing, including pressuring theaters to cancel scheduled shows and warning officials worldwide not to attend.

Shen Yun artists’ family members in China also face constant harassment. Liu, whose parents immigrated to the UK when she was little, told The Epoch Times that Chinese police had questioned her China-based relatives about her attendance at Fei Tian College in New York, a school that prepares Shen Yun’s performers.

Lemish recalled that after one performance in Canberra, Australia, he was stopped on the street by several members of the Australian Parliament, who told him that they had enjoyed the show.

“They said the entire parliament got a letter from the [Chinese] embassy saying, ‘Do not see Shen Yun,’” Lemish recalled the legislators telling him.

Lemish said they then told him: “‘So of course, we all came and we had enough for quorum here. We could have passed some legislation while we were at your show.’”

While some of these operations ended up becoming “free advertising,” Lemish said the company has noted changes in the saboteurs’ tactics.

U.S. authorities in 2024 sentenced two Chinese agents who tried to bribe the IRS into revoking Shen Yun’s nonprofit status. Leaked notes from Chinese police meetings also showed authorities backing specific social media influencers in the United States and Japan who have been producing content slandering Shen Yun and the Falun Gong spiritual group.

The Epoch Times reported in December 2024 that Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, in a 2022 secret meeting, directed officials to escalate the regime’s suppression globally by spreading disinformation and weaponizing democratic institutions in the West. Their target is Falun Gong and any entities started by Falun Gong practitioners.

Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas) at the Protect Children's Innocence press event outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Sept. 20, 2022. Terri Wu/The Epoch Times

Shen Yun, founded in 2006 and seeking to highlight the human rights abuses Falun Gong practitioners face in China, would fit the bill.

Lemish said the company has seen 18 threatening emails since this year’s tour began in December. Typically, the messages have been sent to theaters on the morning of a show, claiming that bombs had been placed in the venue and would be detonated if the show went on.

Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas) denounced the bomb threats in a post on X, noting the “Chinese Communist Party has a shameless history of targeting Shen Yun with bomb threats globally.”

“Yesterday’s baseless bomb threat at the Kennedy Center was yet another attempt to intimidate,” he wrote. “CCP sabotage efforts will not prevail. Shen Yun will continue to showcase authentic Chinese culture free from communist influence!”

No threats have materialized, and no show has been canceled, Lemish said.

Shen Yun doesn’t know how many people are involved in the intimidation campaign. Theaters in different countries sometimes received identical emails at the same time, sometimes from the same email address, according to a sample of the emails Shen Yun shared.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington on Feb. 21, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Lemish said Shen Yun’s performers are “100 percent determined” to keep performing.

For a lot of performers, including himself, “their dream is to bring the show to China someday,” he said at the press conference. “We’re still living up to that dream.”

The Kennedy Center show marked Lemish’s first tour stop in Washington in a decade.

He said he was grateful for the support from theaters and audience members and that the company was looking forward to performing 11 more shows at the venue.

Lemish said the Chinese proxies are trying to scare people off.

“Don’t let them win,” he said.