Tag: theatre

We Went to Shen Yun So You Don’t Have To

by SusanChen@Perth, posted in 修煉篇

Interesting Show Apr 25 John Huntington

The Shen Yun show is a relentless, ubiquitous, and unavoidable marketing force, especially in any city where one of their eight companies are performing. I love many kinds of live shows, and have long been curious about this, but–ethically–could I go? I knew that Falun Gong (aka Falun Dafa), which produces and uses Shen Yun as a fundraising machine, was problematic (to say the least), but I didn’t really research it thoroughly until after buying tickets; in hindsight, this was unfortunate (see below). In the end, we decided to go, since Shen Yun and Falun Gong won’t be affected in any way by me buying a ticket or not—they are still going to take in millions and millions of dollars this year and likely for many more. And, after seeing the show, I think the service I can provide is to tell you that I cannot recommend the show, and not only because of the sketchiness and secrecy around Falun Gong and the way the Shen Yun company members are treated, but also because it’s just not a good show. 

Background

Falun Gong was started in the early 1990s by Li Hongzhi and the religious movement was persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party, which is obviously horrible and tragic; given this history, Falun Gong/Shen Yun could be a sympathetic cause. But they responded to persecution with so much secrecy and aggressive propaganda that it all makes it extremely difficult to empathize with or support them. Shen Yun company members live with Li himself (apparently) and hundreds of Falun Gong members at the secretive, 400+ acre, fortress-like “Dragon Springs” compound near Cuddebackville, NY, about 50 miles northwest of Lincoln Center, where they perform every spring here in NYC. The religious (tax exempt) compound is not open to the public, and there is a high security checkpoint on the single entrance road. The complex is surrounded on all sides by steep hills and a creek and in many places a stone wall; it’s very hard for outsiders to have any idea what’s going on inside, and neighbors have been complaining about the secretive organization for decades. Falun Gong says this is all necessary because of ongoing Chinese Communist Party harassment, but they have so muddied the waters with propaganda (any search takes you through rings of sponsored content and sympathetic websites by people connected to the organization) that it’s hard to get to the truth.  But in recent years, information has been getting out about how the Shen Yun company members and Falun Gong practitioners are treated, and it’s far from the happy shiny image you see in their commercials. As I was writing this, the NY Times released, “An ‘Army of Child Laborers’ Enriches Shen Yun, Ex-Dancers Say in Suit” (gift link), and here’s a detailed piece from late last year, “How Shen Yun Tapped Religious Fervor to Make $266 Million” (gift link). And, finally, here’s a great explainer video from my old friend Rebecca Watson, “The Dangerous Cult Behind the Shen Yun Theatrical Show”

The Show

Two friends and I went to see Shen Yun at the David H. Koch (yes, that one) theater at Lincoln Center on the afternoon of Wednesday April 9. Of course, the lobby was full of Shen Yun and Falun Gong merch and info tables, and the pre show email said, “Please plan on arriving at least 45 minutes before the show time. Performances start right on time—it is one whole experience and you won’t want to miss the opening piece!”. Luckily, we ignored the email because they didn’t open the house until about 15 minutes before curtain (likely to force people to spend more time at the tables).

After we were seated, the Koch’s professional usher staff came around and told us that the production was very strict about not recording anything during the show. This is pretty standard for many shows these days (and for good reason, to prevent distraction), but, surprisingly, where we were seated in the cheapest seats on the upper-most level, we were also accompanied throughout the performance by two (apparently) Falun Gong/Shen Yun minders with earpieces who watched our every move (although they missed the guy in front of me who made an audio recording of about half the show). I was told too by a friend that during the entire Shen Yun run, the usual public Lincoln Center Tours are not even allowed in the Koch theater building, which is one of the three largest venues in Lincoln Center. 

The performance consisted of around 20 pieces accompanied by a live orchestra, made up of mostly traditional orchestral instruments, along with a couple Chinese specialties. The orchestra was relatively small by classical standards (I didn’t count, but the orchestra pit looked pretty roomy) but was solid and tight. Most of the show is made up of dance pieces, often based around an athletic performance style incorporating acrobatic moves; the collective precision of the dancers was amazing. But while I’m not really a connoisseur, the dances–while impressive–got somewhat repetitive to me (and of course I should make clear that any criticism I have is directed at the group leadership, not the company members or performers).

The show started with “A New Era Begins”, a pretty traditional dance number, which “heralds the arrival of the creator”, according to the program.  Between the numbers a pair of emcees addresses the audience–one in English and the other in Chinese–about each piece and sets up the next act. Jared Madsen was the English speaker for our performance; he also acts in the media as a sort of English speaking, front-facing spokesperson for the Falun Gong/Shen Yun (it sounds like his voice in the NY-area marketing: “See it at least once in your lifetime!”). Things progress along, telling the story of how wonderful everything was in China before communism with occasional “whimsical” detours (some drawn from Journey to the West) but as the show progresses, the propaganda gets more and more overt, and the whole show gets much darker.

We eventually reach the “Unprecedented Crime” scene which, according to the program, “…begins in a sunny park, where a group of people sit down to meditate and read a golden book.”  Eventually, “a young couple is forced apart on their wedding day, as the husband is dragged away to prison. Despite beatings and torture, he refuses to renounce his faith. He is eventually released, a broken man…”  If I remember right, it was in this scene that the character was blinded by his captors. I could be wrong, since the blinding is not in the program synopsis, and obviously these scenes are not in any of the upbeat marketing videos I saw for the show (they do have a paid video library if you’re interested). In a later scene, “The Way of Dafa Is Now Taught”, the dancers get a break, and we get a tenor and pianist. They do a number, with lyrics projected on the big screen like, “… atheism and evolution are doctrines of the Devil”. Afterwards, we are treated to another dance number, and then it’s intermission.

The second act starts (of course) with a couple more dance numbers, including a very confusing piece about a poet writing a story about the imperial concubine (kid-friendly content too!) and another about how a female restaurant owner does “kung fu” to protect her noodle shop. Again, the performers were amazing, but after you’ve seen the same (incredible) spinning move 10 times, it starts to get repetitive. Later, we get another musical interlude, “With Our Lives We Await”, which includes the (again projected) lyrics in case anyone missed the point in the first act: “Harm is done unto us by modern thought, Denial of God hath pestilence wrought, Atheism and evolution are Satan’s ruse…” 

This all leads up to the big finale, “The Creator has Arrived”, during which, according to the program synopsis the, “… story returns us to modern-day China, where zealous young nationalists, mockingly known as “Little Pinks” (xiao fen hong), have thoroughly bought into the Party’s doctrine. But after events quickly lead one of them to a clear-eyed view of the world, he encounters Falun Dafa practitioners. Finding his way back to tradition and kindness, he discovers a new sense of hope-and not a moment too soon.” As I remember it (again, not in the program synopsis), somewhere along in here is when the previously-blinded Falun Gong practitioner regains his sight, of course thanks to his faith. And for this final scene, the “creator” is played by an older gentleman, who looked to me remarkably like Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi. The “creator” stands upstage with a large projection radiating out from his head and the whole company facing upstage, adoringly, towards him. This is the completion of the story arc, such as it is.  “See you next year!”, Mr. Madsen said from the stage to close things out; uh, no you won’t.

The Production

I’m a production guy, so my perspective is invariably informed by 40+ years working on hundreds of shows. Everything in the Shen Yun performance we saw was done in front of a large projection screen with three rows of steps in front, with front projectors (you can see in the photo above–they had Chinese characters written on the top of the projectors so I assume they are owned by the production) displaying pretty high res imagery that looks like it’s straight out of a video gaming engine like Unity or Unreal. (As a show control geek, I’d be interested to know how they synchronized the video to the orchestra/dancers–typically this would be done by be something like a metronome-like click track sent from the video to the conductor’s ear). The steps were really the only physical production elements in the show aside from a few hand props. The costumes were colorful and looked fine to me, but my more discerning friend, looking through binoculars, questioned their quality. 

The steps were not lit well, presumably so as not to wash out the front projection screen (an LED wall would obviously be an improvement). So when performers were there, they were mostly illuminated by washover from the projected imagery. There seemed to be basically two light cues in the show: on and off. “On” was a single full stage, very bright wash cue that included enough side lighting to make the dancers “pop”.  Even in the two musical interludes where it was just a piano and a soloist, a full-stage wash look was used. This is one of many places the show could have really benefited from the contributions of professional designers (no designers were credited in the program). 

One geeky lighting thing I will give them credit for was the control of the orchestra pit lights. When I worked at the Metropolitan Opera a couple decades ago, one pet peeve that I always had was that the spill from the orchestra pit music stand lights was so bright that it would illuminate the curtain and the stage, often affecting the staging. At the Met, which works in rotating rep, this was pretty unavoidable since the musicians often play two long operas in a single day, and the illumination of the score sheets is a big deal. But in Shen Yun, the disciplined orchestra started playing in the dark (only the conductor had their stand light on), and then the pit music stand lights would fade up after the bright stage wash cue returned.

The sound was perfunctory and effective, with a few sound cues from the video, and the soloists miced using old-school foot mics. From where I was sitting, I couldn’t see mics in the pit, (the Koch was built for dance with a live orchestra) but there clearly was some additional playback since–strangely–during the curtain call and walk out after the show, music could be heard but the orchestra was not playing.

Patented “3D” Video Effect

As I mentioned above, in front of the upstage screen there is a stage-wide row of three steps, with an obvious gap between the screen and the steps (obvious, at least, from our balcony seats, and I assume they didn’t sell the levels above for sightline reasons).  Performers would jump behind these steps and then “fly” away as avatars on the video screen. The first time they did this effect, it was impressive. But then they did what no experienced director/creative team would ever do–use the effect again and again to the point that it became comic. Over and over throughout the show, the amazingly acrobatic performers ran up and jumped behind the steps, and then their avatars appeared in the video (again, think video game) and then flew off into space, or onto a cloud, or off to see the “creator”. Or vice-versa: the avatars would fly on the screen to set locations of the pre-positioned dancers behind the steps, who would then leap over towards the audience for their entrance. The motion is jarring, since the performers are jumping the opposite direction from the avatars, as if the other side of the screen–in the virtual world–was bounded by virtual trampolines. And on a big professional stage like this–especially with such acrobatic performers–it was kind of surprising to me they didn’t do any actual performer flying.  That’s pretty straightforward to do these days.

In the program this effect is explained as “A Shen Yun innovation creates seamless interaction between projection and performers on stage-an invention so original it has its own patent.”  They listed two patents; so, of course I looked them up (you can read them here by entering the patent numbers).

Patent 9468860 System and method for integrating digital background with stage performance explains:

“The discovery disclosed here is that the appearance and movement of images of actors can be integrated and/or coordinated with movements of live actors on a stage in a way that the images appear, to an audience, as lifelike extensions of the live actors. Projection screens or video display panels are used as a stage backdrop to display images of actors. Appearance and movement of the images on the screen or panel displays is coordinated with appearance and movement of live actors on the stage platform such that movement of the images appears as an extension of the movement of the actors. There is a transitioning between images on the stage backdrop and actors on the stage platform and/or between actors on the stage platform and images on the stage backdrop. The transitioning, and coordination of the movements of the images and actors, and/or of the actors and images, before and after the transitioning, expands the apparent range of movement of actors during a stage performance. This disclosure describes systems and methods for integrating a digital background with a stage performance.”

And patent 10981078 Methods for a stage performance states:

“Herein, new techniques for transitioning between actors on a stage platform and images of actors on a stage backdrop, or between images of actors on a stage backdrop and actors on a stage platform, are disclosed. This transport generally involves use of a prop and/or images of props during the transitioning. The techniques disclosed here may be perceived by an audience as an actor being transported over significant distances as an actor transitions from a stage platform to an image of the same actor on a stage backdrop, or as an image of an actor transitions from a stage backdrop to the live actor on a stage platform. In some examples, the techniques disclosed, that transport actors, here may be perceived by an audience as an actor not having moved from one location to another, but as the actor located in the same location, but the audience having a different viewpoint of the location and/or actor.”

The sole inventor of both patents is listed as “Li, Hongzhi (Cuddebackville, NY)”; of course that’s the Falun Gong founder, and Cuddebackville is the location of the secretive Dragon Springs Falun Gong/Shen Yun compound. Patents often have co-inventors, but I guess in this case Li thought up the whole thing by himself. 

It’s worth keeping in mind that the basic idea of a US patent is that they are supposed to be granted only for novel inventions, and one of the basic tests for novelty is, “….if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains.”  (from the patent office website more on Wikipedia here )

One long-extant issue with our US patent system (which I wrote about in the 1990s for Lighting Dimensions) is that for a niche industry like ours, it’s not likely that a patent examiner would be fully aware of hundreds of years of show production technology history; that’s a lot of (often not well documented) prior art. And if no one in the know sees a patent filing and challenges it with prior art, the examiner will generally grant the patent. 

To me, as someone with “ordinary skill in the art” after 40+ years working on shows, the idea described of jumping behind a platform or prop and then appearing on a video would be pretty obvious (although, honestly, I didn’t have time to carefully read every minute detail of the patent so I could be missing something).  But whether or not there is prior art no longer matters; with the patents granted, Shen Yun/Falun Gong can sue anyone they believe infringes, and anyone who is sued would then have to either settle or go through the significant expense of challenging the patent in court. But in the end, I don’t think any of that is likely or a worthwhile effort; the effect just really isn’t that good. 

After The Show

In the lobby after the show many (apparent) Falun Gong members came around—audio recorders in hand—asking everyone how they liked the show; others directed people to a video station to record testimonials. None of us really liked the show so, obviously, we declined, but I did ask one of the Falun Gong volunteers in the lobby if that was Mr. Li Hongzhi himself playing the “creator”, since he apparently lives only a couple hours away upstate. I confused her a bit, but eventually she said Li wasn’t there that day, and then immediately asked how I liked the show. I told her I didn’t agree with the song lyrics about evolution and atheism. Then my friend, who works in the circus, said they would have appreciated some juggling as part of the show, especially since China has a long history of stunning circus performances. And then my other friend said that they were a witch and really was more into goddesses than gods.  So I’m sure this volunteer had to file an interesting report that afternoon.

So in the end, for all of these reasons–ethical and performance related–I do not recommend Shen Yun.  If you want to see some beautiful dance with a live orchestra, the New York City Ballet is performing in the same building this spring, and tickets cost about the same as Shen Yun.

https://www.controlgeek.net/blog/2025-4-25-we-went-to-shen-yun-so-you-dont-have-to

John Huntington is an author, educator, entertainment and show control systems consultant, and sound engineer. He is also an award-winning photographer and storm chaser. Huntington is a Professor Emeritus of Entertainment Technology after more than 24 years at New York City College of Technology, also known as Citytech, which is part of CUNY. At Citytech, he led the audio, live video and networking/control areas, and for more than 20 years designed the show control systems and oversaw the A/V for the Gravesend Inn® haunted attraction.

Huntington’s book Show Networks and Control Systems was the industry standard until it was retired in 2023 and replaced with two books: Introduction to Show Networking (2020) and Introduction to Show Control (2023). Details on all books here.

Mr. Huntington has written more than 50 published articles, one of which—Rethinking Entertainment Technology Education—won USITT’s Herbert D. Greggs Merit award in 2004; the 2019 follow-up to this article, Bridging Art and State-Of-The Art, also won the same award. He has sound designed over 20 productions in New York City and regional theatres like Seattle Rep, and has given more than 50 master classes, workshops, presentations, papers, and talks at conferences and trade shows throughout the United States.

In 2005, Mr. Huntington was first appointed by ESTA’s Entertainment Technician Certification Program (ETCP) as a “Subject Matter Expert” for the entertainment electrician certification test.

Mr. Huntington taught as a visiting professor at the Yale School of Drama for 14 years; taught sound design at NYU; worked as a Systems Consultant for George Kindler’s show and audio control firm Thoughtful Designs (a PRG company); as sound engineer at the Metropolitan Opera House and for the annual Met Opera/New York Philharmonic summer parks tour; as a systems engineer for Production Arts Lighting, working on projects like Buccaneer Bay at Treasure Island casino; as technical editor for Theatre Crafts and Lighting Dimensions magazines; and his first job out of college was with Bran Ferren’s legendary special effects firm Associates and Ferren, helping to build projectors for Pink Floyd and working on (and even appearing in) movies like Little Shop of Horrors and The Manhattan Project.

Mr. Huntington studied technical design, production, theatre engineering and sound at the Yale School of Drama (MFA) and Ithaca College (BFA). He lives in New York City and is a member of Local #1 IATSE stagehands.  Mr. Huntington is also a die-hard music fan, whitewater and sea kayaker, mountain and road biker, and chases tornadoes each spring in the plains.

How Shen Yun Tapped Religious Fervor to Make $266 Million

by SusanChen@Perth, posted in 新聞小說賞析

The dance group has accumulated enormous wealth, in large part by getting followers of the Falun Gong religious movement to work for free and pay its bills.

By Michael Rothfeld and Nicole Hong

The reporters examined thousands of pages of records, including internal communications, and interviewed dozens of people about the finances of the dance group Shen Yun and the Falun Gong religious movement.

Dec. 29, 2024, 3:00 a.m. ET

Over the past decade, the dance group Shen Yun Performing Arts has made money at a staggering rate.

The group had $60 million in 2015.

It had $144 million by 2019.

And by the end of last year, tax records show, it had more than a quarter of a billion dollars, stockpiling wealth at a pace that would be extraordinary for any company, let alone a nonprofit dance group from Orange County, N.Y.

Operated by Falun Gong, the persecuted Chinese religious movement, Shen Yun’s success flows in part from its ability to pack venues worldwide — while exploiting young, low-paid performers with little regard for their health or well-being.

But it also is a token of the power that Falun Gong’s founder, Li Hongzhi, has wielded over his followers. In the name of fighting communism, and obeying Mr. Li’s mystical teachings, they have created a global network to glorify him and enrich his movement.

Under Mr. Li’s direct leadership, Shen Yun has become a repository of vast wealth for Falun Gong, often accumulating money at the expense of its loyal adherents, a New York Times investigation has found.

It has raked in funds through ticket sales — nearly $39 million in 2023 alone — but also by using religious fealty to command the free labor of its followers. It has received tens of millions of dollars more in ways that may have crossed legal or ethical lines, The Times found.

In one case, Shen Yun and a school that trains its dancers received $16 million from The Epoch Times, a newspaper run by Falun Gong followers, during a period when federal prosecutors said the publication’s accounts were inflated in a money-laundering conspiracy.

Shen Yun and a network of satellite organizations added more wealth by skirting rules to tap tens of millions of dollars in pandemic-era relief money.

And three former Shen Yun performers told The Times that they were used to ferry large amounts of cash into the United States, a possible attempt to circumvent laws about reporting U.S. currency transactions.

Shen Yun has kept its own costs down by wringing countless volunteer hours, and sometimes personal savings, from followers of Mr. Li, who has suggested he created the universe and instructed believers that Shen Yun performances can save people from a coming apocalypse by exposing them to his teachings.

Eager to heed Mr. Li, the followers have borne most of the financial burden for staging hundreds of Shen Yun shows around the world, including paying out of their own pockets to book venues, print fliers, buy advertising and sell tickets — even going into debt to cover upfront costs.

“They all think — including me before — we all think it is an important part of the path to godhood,” said Simone Gao, a former practitioner and Falun Gong media personality. “If you devote time, energy and money to this cause, the reward is incomparable to what you get in this world.”

It was not clear why Shen Yun has amassed so much money, or why nearly all of its assets — $249 million in 2023 — were kept in cash and other liquid instruments. Experts said it was unusual for a nonprofit not to invest such sums unless they were needed for significant short-term expenses, which Shen Yun has not seemed to have incurred.

Shen Yun’s representatives declined to answer questions about its finances. In the past, Mr. Li has said large sums of money were needed to battle the Chinese Communist Party, which has banned the movement and repressed its followers since the 1990s.

“For over 25 years, Falun Gong practitioners have struggled to peacefully resist persecution from the largest totalitarian regime on earth, and Shen Yun is a key part of that effort,” a Shen Yun spokeswoman, Ying Chen, said in a statement to The Times. “Your attempts to brand Shen Yun as a grand moneymaking scheme are shocking and deeply offensive.”

Ms. Chen accused The Times of making “gross distortions or blatant factual errors,” but she declined to elaborate.

As Shen Yun has amassed wealth, its supporters have purchased real estate for Mr. Li’s movement, including Falun Gong’s 400-acre headquarters, known as Dragon Springs, which is about 60 miles northwest of New York City.

They have also subsidized the lifestyle of Mr. Li, now in his early 70s, and his wife, Li Rui, a top manager in Shen Yun.

One follower gave the movement her life savings before dying of cancer, virtually penniless.

In recent years, Mr. Li and his aides have found yet another way to make money through Shen Yun. They have created companies that market products directly to Falun Gong followers, like a Tang Elegance necklace with a spessartite garnet for $3,850, Heavenly Phoenix earrings for $925, a $35 ornament of the Shen Yun tour bus and Shen Yun-branded athleisure clothing.

Practitioners have been told they should purchase the most up-to-date Falun Gong clothing for public events, including a reversible blue-and-yellow jacket for $120.

Business records show that Mr. Li personally started an online video platform that charges $199.99 a year for a subscription to watch Shen Yun performances. His associates also created another video platform, Gan Jing World, which was accused by YouTube in a lawsuit this month of stealing content. The platform has not filed a response to the suit.

Practitioners were urged to subscribe to help “Master” — as Mr. Li is known — save more souls, emails show. Many did just that, former followers said.

“People gave up their life’s savings, and this happened so often,” said Rob Gray, a former practitioner in London who spent 15 years working on Falun Gong projects. “There’s a constant theme now to fleece practitioners, to take money. Where is this profit going to?”

A Winning Strategy

From the start, Shen Yun has pursued a winning strategy for reaping huge profits: It has gotten other people to shoulder the costs of putting on its shows.

Although the group has a stated mission of reviving traditional Chinese culture while “providing audiences everywhere with an experience of beauty,” it does not routinely pay for the billboards, television ads or fliers depicting Shen Yun’s dancers leaping through the air that are ubiquitous in cities around the world. Nor does it generally cover the costs of venues, ticket sales or hotels and meals for performers.

That burden has fallen on a network of smaller satellite organizations that Mr. Li and his aides have encouraged followers to form around the world.

Known as presenters, the organizations were incorporated as nonprofits in the United States, operating in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and other cities.

The nonprofits are staffed by practitioners who work as unpaid volunteers and have agreed to “bear the responsibility for all costs incurred” and be liable for losses, claims “and expenses of every kind and description” related to staging Shen Yun shows in their areas, according to a contract reviewed by The Times.

Every year, the groups collectively spend millions of dollars and keep only enough in ticket sales to cover their expenses, sending every penny of profit back to Shen Yun.

In 2018, a satellite organization in Georgia, the Falun Dafa Association of Atlanta, spent $1,621,011 on advertising, hotel rooms, food, transportation, venue fees and other expenses, tax records show. The group earned $2,077,507, mostly from seven Shen Yun performances in Atlanta. The Atlanta nonprofit kept $1,621,011 and sent the remaining money — $456,496 — to Shen Yun.

If a satellite organization should spend more money than it earns, it still sends money to Shen Yun — and it falls on the people who run the groups to make up the difference.

At the Indiana Falun Dafa Association, local followers made loans to the satellite organization for a decade. In 2018, eight of them lent a combined $375,000 without any loan agreements and at zero percent interest, tax filings show. One of the lenders, the group’s president, handed over $130,000 on his own.

The satellite organization paid Shen Yun $169,233.39 to put on three shows that February, records show, but did not make enough to repay the loans. They appear to have been settled only years later, using government grants.

Inside the local organizations, practitioners can feel immense pressure to deliver for Mr. Li, who has taught that success in selling Shen Yun tickets is an indicator of how devoted they are to his teachings.

He has also urged followers to advertise only in “well-to-do” areas and to set high prices for Falun Gong dance shows.

“Getting things for nothing,” Mr. Li said, “wouldn’t conform to this dimension’s principles.”

Ahead of shows in the San Francisco area, followers would gather on Saturday nights to study Mr. Li’s writings and share how many Shen Yun tickets they had sold, according to a former practitioner who asked to be identified only by her last name, Wang.

Selling as many tickets as possible was seen as a way to accumulate more virtue, she said.

And in London in March 2023, a note of panic crept into an “urgent” email sent by a practitioner named Sharon Xu to other followers in the area. She was seeking their help with leafleting, she wrote, because the show was approaching and thousands of tickets were still unsold.

“We are at a crucial stage in Shen Yun promotion,” she wrote. “Thousands of predestined people whom Master wants to save have yet to connect with us, and there are only literally days remaining this year.”

‘All Her Money Is Gone’

For all the time and money that the operators of the satellite organizations provided, some gave much more to the movement — and to Mr. Li himself.

In 2006, one of Shen Yun’s first performers began traveling from his home in Maryland to Falun Gong’s headquarters along with his sister, also a performer, and their mother, a devoted practitioner. Soon, they all moved to Dragon Springs, known among followers as the mountain, to focus on dancing.

The man, whom The Times is identifying by his first name, Liang, and his sister eventually left Shen Yun and moved away. But their mother remained on the mountain, working unpaid for years as a top aide to Mr. and Ms. Li and as a bookkeeper for the dance group.

She left the area only rarely, such as for Liang’s wedding in 2014, he would later write in an email to friends. That same year, she and her husband sold the house they had owned in Maryland since the 1980s for $485,000, records show.

Soon after, she began spending money for Shen Yun, her family would later learn. After Mr. Li remarked that Shen Yun’s orchestra should use only the best pianos, Liang’s mother arranged for the purchase of $260,000 in premium models, according to another email her son sent and other records reviewed by The Times.

Other gifts and donations followed, including thousands of dollars in payments for Wi-Fi hot spots and domain names and monthly payments for Mr. and Ms. Li’s cellphone bills to Verizon, according to the records, Liang’s emails and people familiar with the events.

Mr. Li teaches that diligently practicing his meditation exercises and reading his texts keeps the body healthy by purging the bad karma that causes illness. So Liang’s mother did not see a doctor when she began losing weight and becoming increasingly haggard around 2018.

By the fall of 2019, she was 66 years old and down to 70 pounds. Shocked at her appearance during a video call, her family finally persuaded her to get medical care.

The diagnosis was dire: kidney cancer that had spread through her body, leaving her with small odds of survival and tens of thousands of dollars in expected medical costs. She told Liang and his sister that she would not be able to pay for any of it.

“My mom revealed that all her money is gone, donated to the mountain,” Liang emailed his friends on Oct. 15, 2019. “Hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

As their mother was slipping away, Liang and his sister got another shock. An employee in the Shen Yun office accidentally mailed them a statement for their mother’s credit card, which showed charges from Saks Fifth Avenue and other shops. They reviewed more statements and discovered that her accounts had been used to buy tens of thousands of dollars in luxury items, apparently for Mr. Li and his wife.

The statements showed a $13,029.70 charge from the Watch Gallery in London and $10,000 for virgin wool suits and other clothing from Hugo Boss. They showed $2,045.31 in purchases at the luxury retailer Hermès in Austria and another $1,091.99 at the jewelry house Van Cleef & Arpels in Switzerland.

They showed thousands more spent on seafood and custom billiard cues — Mr. Li is an avid pool player — and assorted charges from high-end brands including Ferragamo and Tiffany & Company. Ms. Li appeared to have personally used his mother’s credit card, Liang wrote to his friends in an email.

Many of the charges were made in 2018 and 2019, as Liang’s mother’s health was failing, records show.

Within weeks of seeing a doctor, Liang’s mother was dead.

Afterward, a portion of the money was repaid to her family, people familiar with the events said, though the source of the repayment was not clear.

Shen Yun’s spokeswoman, Ms. Chen, said The Times’s account of these events was “inaccurate and misleading in numerous respects.” She said the details were subject to a confidentiality agreement, which she called “a carefully negotiated resolution of a misunderstanding.”

The experience left Liang convinced that the movement was preying on people like his mother, who gave willingly in hopes of receiving a heavenly reward.

“For the first time in my life, I’m seeing things as how they truly are,” he wrote in one of his emails. “I’m not going to let this happen to anyone that I care about ever again.”

Envelopes of Cash

To track the flow of money into Shen Yun, The Times reviewed more than 15 years’ worth of tax filings for the main nonprofit and dozens of its satellite organizations.

Reporters also examined hundreds of pagesof internal Shen Yun-related records and communications and interviewed people with knowledge of the organization’s financial dealings, including some who were directly involved in organizing shows.

The dance group and a school that trains its performers received about $16 million from The Epoch Times, the right-leaning news organization founded by followers of Mr. Li, during a period when federal prosecutors said the news outlet’s accounts were inflated by the proceeds of a money-laundering scheme.

Prosecutors charged The Epoch Times’s chief financial officer, Bill Guan, and an employee in Vietnam with conspiracy to launder at least $67 million using cryptocurrency in a scheme that involved identity theft and prepaid bank cards. Mr. Guan has pleaded not guilty.

The Epoch Times has said in public statements that it would cooperate with the investigation and that Mr. Guan had been suspended. It has also said that the accusations against Mr. Guan run counter to the publisher’s standards and to the principles of Falun Gong.

Shen Yun’s supporters found another source of income when the pandemic swept the world in 2020, causing venues to close and putting a strain on the performing arts industry.

They did it in part by exploiting a loophole in a federal pandemic relief program launched to keep struggling arts programs afloat. The program was designed to award no more than $10 million in grant funding either to any one group or up to five “affiliated” organizations, with rules that were meant to ensure no single entity got a disproportionate share of the aid.

Shen Yun’s satellite nonprofits were all run by ardent followers of Mr. Li, many of whom had staged Shen Yun shows in their cities and sent money back to the dance group for years. But on paper, none of the groups shared board members or were formally related to Shen Yun or to one another, and so they were allowed to tap the federal well without limitation, The Times found.

In all, at least 25 of the satellite groups applied to the so-called Shuttered Venue Operations Grant program and received a combined $48 million, records show. Shen Yun, despite not performing for most of 2020 and 2021, reported a surge in assets in those years of $50 million.

Meredith Lynsey Schade, a theatrical producer who worked with other applicants that sometimes struggled to get aid, called Shen Yun’s approach unethical.

“There are so many organizations that went under because they couldn’t pass the threshold,” she said. “Instead, one organization is hoarding all of this money.”

And then there were the practitioners who sneaked wads of cash into the United States at the dance group’s direction.

Three former Shen Yun performers told The Times that they ferried money through customs without disclosing it. Their accounts bore some similarities to a 2009 incident in which a practitioner was charged by federal prosecutors with smuggling more than $100,000 in cash, some wrapped in tinfoil, through customs at Kennedy International Airport. (A lawyer for Falun Gong later convinced prosecutors to drop the case.)

In 2015, the night before flying back to New York from Barcelona, the performers were each handed a white envelope stuffed with $100 bills.

They were instructed to keep it in their carry-on bags but to separate it. One performer, then a teenager, recalled getting $10,000 — the maximum a person can carry in without reporting it under laws meant to combat money laundering and other crimes. The performer put some of the money in a diary and recalled feeling like a character in a spy movie.

“They said it was very important money,” said the performer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. A manager instructed: “Don’t let other people know that you have this.”

Sun Zan, another performer who carried cash, said he had to surrender his envelope to Shen Yun staff on the bus after the flight. One performer was chastised for leaving the money in a bag that could not be reached right away, he said.

Mr. Sun did not think much of the episode because he had often been paid in cash for dancing, he said, though there was one key difference.

The envelope he brought home from Barcelona held about half of what he earned from Shen Yun in an entire year.

Susan C. Beachy and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research. Peiyue Wu contributed reporting.

Michael Rothfeld is an investigative reporter in New York, writing in-depth stories focused on the city’s government, business and personalities. More about Michael Rothfeld

Nicole Hong is an investigative reporter, focused on covering New York and its surrounding regions. More about Nicole Hong