As an entertainment – a show designed to introduce Western audiences to aspects of Chinese culture by integrating ancient art forms with contemporary Western elements – Wednesday night's performance by Shen Yun Divine Performing Arts was certainly a success.
This 95-member troupe put on a two-and-a-half hour display that combined choreography inspired by Chinese classical dance and music that melded traditional Chinese instruments such as the erhu (the two-stringed bowed instrument) with a symphonic orchestra to present vignettes to tell stories drawn from Chinese mythology.
While the two people introducing the various episodes spoke of the diversity of China's culture and pointed out which segment came from which region or ethnic group, it was difficult for a first-time viewer to notice any real differences – especially as certain choreographic patterns kept reappearing as the night went on.
Even so, the performers' exuberance, the dazzling colors of the costumes and the sense of innocent delight that most of these dances produced made for some remarkably beautiful, even exciting, moments, from the vigorous "Drummers of the Tang Court" to floral-and-fan dance of "Welcoming Spring."
The story segments, told through dance and mime, were also greatly effective, from the comical exploits of "The Monkey King Triumphs" and "Monk Ji Gong Abducts the Bride" (he does so in order to save a village from an impending disaster), to a retelling of the story of Mulan.
The backgrounds projected behind the performers were rarely static, creating that at times were almost like a three-dimensional film, as in "The Five Millennia Begin" and "The Udumbarais Bloom."
The music for the production was provided by an excellent orchestra, conducted by Rutang Chen – an ensemble in which Western and Oriental instruments were perfectly blended. Xiaochun Qi demonstrated that the two-string erhu is an instrument capable of producing a sound that is almost voice-like in its richness and flexibility.
But Wednesday night's performance at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center wasn't meant to be merely – or solely – an entertainment. It was also – and perhaps foremost – a statement.
It took a while for that statement to become apparent. About two-thirds of the way through the first half, a segment called "Heaven Awaits Us Despite Persecution" featured a family in contemporary clothes suddenly set up by club-wielding men in black jackets emblazoned with red sickle-and-hammer logos. The husband and father is tortured and killed, but is ultimately taken to heaven – represented by a Chinese palace in the clouds – by a dozen or so orange-robed, blue-hatted monks and woman in brightly colored dresses.
Then, in the second half, came an impassioned song by tenor Tian Ge, which was not listed in the program, that spoke about following "the Divine Path" and included a line bemoaning how "The Party's Indoctrination" continues to trouble people.
This was immediately followed by a vignette titled "Dignity and Compassion," which, like "Heaven Awaits…," was a representation of both the persecution in China of followers of the spiritual discipline Falon Dafa (also know as Falun Gong) and the comfort that faith can afford.
"Dignity and Compassion" essentially was a story of conversion. A shackled woman – explicitly described as a follower of Falun Dafa in a prison is subjected to beatings that sicken one of her captors. Again, some divine avengers magically appear, but the woman prevents them from punishing the conscience-stricken captor, who ends up throwing away his hammer-and-sickle adorned black jacket.
Some in the audience Wednesday night were obviously taken aback, or made uncomfortable, by these moments in the show. That "party indoctrination" line, for example, produced a few uneasy giggles from some of those sitting near me, while the response to the Falun Dafa segments of the show were decidedly less enthusiastic than for the ones that were purely dance or told mythological stories.
All I know of Falun Dafa/Falun Gong comes from second- and third-hand sources, and these characterize it as everything from a form of meditation to achieve optimum physical and spiritual well-being to a religious cult to terrorists and enemies of the Chinese government. I have read too many stories of its proponents being imprisoned and tortured, of the Chinese government's indifference toward basic human rights for those with whom it disagrees. These are issues that are too large to deal with in a space such as this, even if I thought myself capable of doing so.
But I'm sure there were some in the audience who probably would not have attended the show if they had known in advance that Divine Performing Arts was affiliated with the Falun Dafa movement. Perhaps they found it hypocritical that a movement that proclaims "truthfulness" as one of its main tenets – along with benevolence and forbearance – would proclaim its origins proudly.
