Shen Yun: Performing for Human Rights and Freedom in China

January 15, 2010

Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.)

http://www.realcourage.org/2010/01/shen-yun-performing/

The Shen Yun Performing Arts group will be making a human rights statement through dance, music, and art at the Washington DC Kennedy Center as part of its continuing 2010 world tour throughout the United States, Canada, UK, Europe, and the world.

The upcoming Washington DC performance from January 19 through 24 will provide a show which combines such dance (traditional Chinese dance, ethnic and folk dance, story-based dance), music (a live orchestra and solo musician singers), and art of incredible costumes and backdrops for hours of spellbinding entertainment. The Shen Yun Performing Arts group has been entertaining audiences around the United States, Canada, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The Shen Yun Performing Arts show's focus is on entertaining its audience and giving many their first exposure to such traditional and ethnic dance and music from China.

Video of Shen Yun Performing Arts Audience Reactions
新唐人電視台 http://www.ntdtv.com

While the majority of the Shen Yun show focuses on Chinese cultural and ethnic stories, music, and dance, other more contemporary story-based performances, included as part of the Shen Yun performance, also have inspirational messages on the importance of our shared universal human rights and human dignity. As one individual told me, "this is how they express themselves on human rights - through their music and through their dance."

The totalitarian oppression of 1.3 billion by the Communist Chinese government is hardly something any human being could ignore in any legitimate portrayal of Chinese life and culture. Portraying stories about life in Communist China, the Shen Yun Performing Arts show includes inspirational stories of how Chinese people are oppressed but find the strength to have courage to be true to themselves and their beliefs.

They include performances praising the Falun Dafa (Falun Gong) group's goals of "truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance." The Falun Dafa have been oppressed, imprisoned, and tortured in Communist China for their beliefs. While such stories were told in dance, the message was very clear, as dancers with jackets appliqued with the Communist hammer and sickle emblem (recognized universally as representing Communism) attacked dancers representing Chinese families and those who sought freedom of expression and belief. One dance tells the story of a family divided, beaten, and a mother killed for her beliefs by Communist thugs, but whose family's beliefs are ultimately rewarded in the afterlife. Another story tells of an activist who is beaten by Communist thugs for displaying the sign "Falun Dafa is good," but who remains courageous. These stories mirror the real life oppression of the Chinese people in Communist China today, a story that the world must hear, and a story that the world must never forget.

While Chinese people with a wide variety of backgrounds, religions, and beliefs suffer in over 1,000 Laogai forced labor concentration camps today (holding 6.8 million), with continuing forced, coerced abortion and abandonment of its children, mistreatment of human beings, and with the oppression of freedoms for Chinese people of all beliefs, any legitimate Chinese performance on human life in China today must not fail to mention human rights.

Having seen this performance ourselves, R.E.A.L. is pleased to commend the Shen Yun Performing Arts on their artistry, talent, and their unceasing courage to honestly portray Chinese culture, Chinese life, Chinese hopes, and Chinese challenges to the world to see. We urge others to see the Shen Yun Performing Arts show for themselves, with upcoming shows in 2010 in many cities in the United States. The Shen Yun Performing Arts also plans 2010 performances in Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Czech Republic, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand.

Banner of Shen Yun Performing Arts 2010 World Tour

Some arts reviewers have been critical of Shen Yun's inclusion of such story-based dances and music, which are the vast minority of their three hour show on Chinese cultural dance and music. One arts reviewer has been critical that contemporary Chinese songs were "peppered with words like 'oppression' and 'injustice.'" I ask such critics, would they have also been critical of a Jewish performing arts group in the 1930s that included stories about the oppression of Jews under Hitler? When did free people start dismissing the performing arts when they point out oppression and injustice?

Such criticism by some of the limited and graceful inclusion of human rights topics in the Shen Yun performances is appalling. What type of artistic expression demands that we can talk about oppression and injustice against all people in every form of entertainment, unless it happens to about oppression and injustice towards the 1.3 billion people in Communist China, one fifth of the world's population?

One can only imagine if arts reviewers had criticized more specific and more directed human rights messages in entertainment such as Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator," "Schindler's List," the music of the American civil rights movement," "A Raisin in the Sun," and "To Kill A Mockingbird," among many examples In fact, history has shown that human rights issues continue to find their way into every form of media - theater, movies, music, and television. The Shen Yun Performing Arts cultural dance and music performance demonstrates that there are no national boundaries to this growing trend of representing human rights in entertainment as part of human expression.

In every form of human expression, from dance to YouTube videos, from music to poems, from books to blogs, from Twitters to protests in the streets, the march for human freedom and human rights presses on.

The choice is not whether love, human rights, and human freedom will ultimately win over hate, supremacism, and totalitarianism. The only real choice is the one we will make as to what we will be doing when the great wave of human rights movements are sweeping the world.

As those who are oppressed sing with hope and fearlessness for their beliefs, will we listen?

The Shen Yun Performing Arts group is counting on your conscience to hear their message.

May 30, 2009 Candlelight Vigil for Tiananmen Square Martyrs - DC's Washington Monument

Washington DC: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts - where Shen Yun performance will be shown in Washington DC in January 2010

The Shen Yun web page for the upcoming Washington DC performance, also urges "For all press, advertising, sponsorship, and ticketing inquiries related to these performances, please call 202-449-9480, or email mailto:%20dc_tickets@ntdtv.com"

Human Rights Activists Celebrate a Night of Chinese Culture of Freedom

On January 2, 2010, R.E.A.L. supporters and other human rights activists from the Voice of the Copts, Pakistan Christian Congress, and Falun Dafa (Falun Gong) attended the Shen Yun Performing Arts show in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Epoch Times reported on this and on our comments at Philadelphia's Academy of Music.

I accompanied Falun Gong's Lisa Tao and others from the Washington DC area to the Shen Yun performance in Philadelphia. At R.E.A.L.'s December 10, 2009 press conference at the National Press Club on Human Rights Day, Lisa Tao and Jin Pang told of the torture of their families in Communist China because of their beliefs. Lisa told of her father was "tortured to death" by the Communist Chinese government, and of her own torture. Lisa told the press and the audience on December 10 how "I was also frequently beaten, and many times I was close to being beaten to death." Jin Pang told of the imprisonment and torture of her mother and her aunt. Her mother and aunt were part of 10,000 Falun Gong supporters arrested during the Beijing Olympics. During the DC press conference, Lisa told of estimates that the Communist government has killed 80 million people, and she told of the countless others tortured, imprisoned, and abused by the Chinese Communist government.

Lisa Tao Speaks at National Press Club on the Human Rights Abuses by Communist China Against Falun Gong (Falun Dafa)

But like during our protest of the 60th anniversary of the Communist Chinese government at the PRC embassy on September 30 (October 1 Beijing time), Lisa does not tire or get discouraged. She glows from the power of hope, love, and freedom that her beliefs have taught her. It is something that the Communists could never take away from her. She found extraordinary strength in her faith and in her belief in human freedom.

Lisa Tao of Falun Dafa (Falun Gong) Protests at PRC Embassy in Washington DC on a Rainy Day

On our trip together to see the Shen Yun performance in Philadelphia on a bitterly cold January night, she does not notice the chill, as we stopped together to get a fish sandwich at a nearby McDonalds. (Meantime, I am bundled with layers of clothing and a heavy sweater.)

Quietly, just like Lisa Tao regularly protests at the PRC embassy without publicity or the press, Lisa Tao is also waging a daily battle for human freedom in Communist China. That night Lisa shared with me her efforts that day alone in helping Chinese people to find the courage to stand up and defy the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). From the United States, Lisa calls people in Communist China on the telephone and tells them about Falun Dafa and also encourages them to stand up against the CCP. She is part of a "Quit CCP" movement of Chinese people who publicly renounce their support for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

That day alone, Lisa Tao convinced 10 new people to publicly Quit the CCP. Her efforts won't be recorded in any local news media. But she has the quiet confidence and satisfaction of someone who is living the courage of her convictions.

The Quit CCP movement states that over 66 million Chinese have left the CCP since December 2004. Public individual statements are posted on the Quit CCP campaign web site. Every day, Lisa Tao and freedom fighters around the world seek to extend a hand to other Chinese people who are lifting themselves up out of oppression.

The march for freedom - for human beings around the world - is just getting started. But every day, there are new members joining that march and taking up the cause.

We share their commitment to universal human rights, and to being Responsible for Equality And Liberty.

Love Wins.