Name: An Exclusive, Inside Look at Shen Yun Performing Arts | Special Episode
Uploaded: 2026-03-31T20:45:11.000Z
Description: In this special episode of American Thought Leaders, we get an exclusive, inside look at the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company—through the eyes of its artists.

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An Exclusive, Inside Look at Shen Yun Performing Arts | Special Episode

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[FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW] At a time when much of the performing arts seem to be on the decline, one company has experienced a meteoric rise.

In less than two decades, Shen Yun Performing Arts has grown from one to eight companies touring the globe simultaneously—each with its own live orchestra. Shen Yun now travels to 200 cities and performs in front of over one million audience members each year.

These artists are driving a restoration of authentic Chinese culture—yet they are banned in China.

In this special episode of American Thought Leaders, we get an exclusive, inside look at the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company—through the eyes of its artists.

How has Shen Yun achieved its remarkable success? What is the secret to its approach?

And why does the Chinese regime feel threatened by their performances?

<em>Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of NTD.</em>
<b></b>
<h2>FULL TRANSCRIPT</h2>
Jan Jekielek:
William Li, it's such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

William Li:
Thank you for having me, Jan.

Mr. Jekielek:
For many of the audience members, it's unexpected that a show that focuses on traditional Chinese culture and dance and expression would be made in America.

Mr. Li:
Right. When I tell people that Shen Yun is made in America, a lot of people don't believe it. People who don't understand us think we're from China. It's like a breath of fresh air to those who have come out of China where you're scared to say what you truly believe. But in America, you can speak freely.

It goes back to how Shen Yun was founded in 2006 by a group of artists who fled China because they wanted freedom of belief. That's pretty much the American dream. You're a refugee, you come to America, you start with nothing, and then you build up your own company. You build up your life from scratch.

Mr. Jekielek:
It's astonishing in a way because the performing arts are not growing at the moment at all, but Shen Yun is actually growing.

Mr. Li:
Shen Yun has really become a global phenomenon. I don't think there's anyone I talk to who hasn't heard of Shen.

Mr. Jekielek:
You have been with Shen Yun for quite some time.

Mr. Jekielek:
How many shows have you done?

Mr. Li:
I have been touring since 2007, and every year we put on about 100 performances per company, so I have 1,500 performances under my belt.

Mr. Jekielek:
This is a wonderful opportunity for American Thought Leaders to talk to several Shen Yun artists. You are a principal dancer, but you're also a teacher, which is very interesting. Let’s talk about that, but before we go there, please tell us about who is here today.

Mr. Li:
Today we have principal dancers who have been with Shen Yun for a very long time, veterans Piotr Huang and Angelia Wang. Some of your viewers might even recognize their faces from billboards or posters from some of our past season’s advertising. Like me, both of them studied at the Fei Tian Academy of the Arts and earned their Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts in classical Chinese dance from Fei Tian College in Cuddebackville, New York.

We also have Marilyn Yang, Jesse Browde, and Lillian Parker. They are rising stars who have received international dance awards and have been accepted to study at Fei Tian and tour with Shen Yun as part of their practicum. Because we also have live music at our shows, we also have one of our musicians, a violinist, Sarah Veazey.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s imagine the first show of your touring season. You've been through a few seasons now, and so what's going through your mind at that point?

Angelica Wang:
Excitement. In different cities and different countries, you feel a little different about bringing a whole new program to the audience. We're really looking forward to the audience's reaction. We wonder, “This year's program, is the audience going to like it? Are they going to understand what we're trying to convey?”

Mr. Jekielek:
Please tell us about the energy just before a show is about to begin. Do you get nervous?

Piotr Huang:
I'm always nervous. There's always some butterflies. One movie director said that the beauty of a live performance is because there's an exhilaration that comes from success. But there is also a certain fear of failure because you only have one chance. If you ever get a chance to be in the wings while we're performing, you can see everyone saying, “Let's go. Let's do well.” When you have the whole team with you, it's much easier to overcome the mental pressure.

Mr. Jekielek:
Before you became a dancer, you wanted to be a pro basketball player. How does Shen Yun training relate to the sports training for pro basketball?

Mr. Huang:
The similarities between the two fields is the physicality. For classical Chinese dance we use the natural muscles required for walking, climbing stairs, running, and playing sports. Being able to train for basketball at a young age actually helped me.

Jesse Browde:
After being accepted to Fei Tian Academy Arts, graduating, going to college, and then becoming a Shen dancer, now looking back, it's been a roller coaster ride.

Mr. Browde:
I started dancing when I was 14-years-old. Before that, I had been playing baseball for roughly seven years. Baseball is not a very physically demanding sport. There's not that much high paced activity in baseball. When I joined Shen Yun as a dancer, I had to train every part of my body to be able to do everything; jump, flip, and dance. There is a lot of flexibility involved.

My grandfather was into baseball, and my dad liked baseball. For many years it was always my dream to go professional as a baseball player, until I saw that Shen Yun show in the spring of 2018. I saw the passion in everybody's faces. I saw that they genuinely loved what they were doing, and that changed my view.

I wanted to do something more meaningful and impactful. I wanted to inspire people and change people in a way that I had been inspired and changed. That's what moved me to become a dancer and say, “This is what I want to do.”

Mr. Jekielek:
Most of the Shen Yun performers are ethnic Chinese, but you don’t appear to be Chinese.

Mr. Browde:
I was born and raised in the West and had no concept of Chinese culture. That's actually what we are performing, a Chinese dance form. When I started dancing, for the first few years, I could copy all the movements. I could do them with relative accuracy. But for some reason something was missing. It just felt a little bit off, and I was just a little different than my peers.

Mr. Jekielek:
How did you overcome that?

Mr. Browde:
It just came back to studying ancient Chinese history, diving into the histories of certain characters, the histories of different dynasties and the whole dynastic cycle. The more I learned, the more my dancing changed to embody certain Chinese principles like the balancing of opposites.

Lillian Parker:
Loyalty, faith, compassion, and forgiveness are the values we portray, and they are universal values. The culture is different on the surface, but everybody can connect to the things underneath. These are values that inspire people and that they can actually use in their lives.

Mr. Jekielek:
Lillie, you're obviously not ethnic Chinese, but you're a Shen Yun dancer. How did that come about?

Ms. Parker:
I often get asked that question, “Why are you doing Chinese dance?” Most kids would do ballet. Ever since I was little I liked dance, and I always took classical Chinese dance classes that my parents signed me up for. I just liked it, so I kept at it.

Once I saw Shen Yun, I got the full picture of what it could actually be. It was just so expressive and so interesting. As a little kid I said, “Wow, that's awesome.” I just wanted to keep doing it. Then eventually, that led me to Shen Yun, which is the biggest classical Chinese dance company right now.

Mr. Jekielek:
I take it your Chinese is pretty good.

Mr. Jekielek:
What is your favorite thing about being a dancer?

Ms. Parker:
There are many things that are great. I see and learn so much about dance and Chinese culture. I learn from the people around me because our dancers are from all over the world. I get to travel around the world and see how people in different countries live and how they react to things. That was really eye opening.

Another great thing is hearing the audience reactions from interviews, because often you can't really see the audience at the show. It's just a sea of people, and we can't really hear that much backstage. When you hear the audience reaction, then you know what you're doing actually touches people or makes them laugh. That's something you appreciate a lot.

Speaker 8:
I thought they were spectacular.

Speaker 9:
It was powerful, and it is something that is needed in today's society.

Speaker 10:
Oh my gosh, it was a riot. I didn't expect to laugh so much and also be touched so much.

Speaker 11:
I was literally looking for something which was magical, uplifting, and it was way more than that.

Speaker 12:
What you're seeing in Shen Yun is an educational experience. You get to learn a little bit about Mandarin, you get to learn a little bit about ethnicity, a little bit about culture.

Speaker 13:
I saw that they were happy, they were joyful as they were expressing themselves, and they loved sending us that beautiful message of honesty and love and just focusing on knowing that there's something bigger than us, a creator, a divine.

Mr. Jekielek:
What's a day in the life of a Shen Yun dancer? Let's start with when you're not on tour, and then maybe when you are on tour.

Ms. Parker:
The whole morning is just dancing. Usually it's dance class, which is barre and fundamentals. Next we'll have rehearsals for the show and then it’s lunchtime. In the afternoon we'll have academics. In the evening, it’s usually more rehearsals. During breaks, we'll do our solo practice. That's usually what a day on campus looks like.

On tour it can vary a lot more depending on the schedule and the shows. If we have an evening show, we'll usually go to the theater in the morning and have a class. Then we spend the whole afternoon setting up the stage, setting up props, and rehearsing with the orchestra.

We're the dancers, so we don't actually have to set anything up. But all the curtains, the whole orchestra pit, and everything is getting set up. We also get accustomed to the theater a bit because every theater is different.

Mr. Jekielek:
How tough is it to learn how to dance and hone your craft and become one of the best traditional Chinese dancers out there?

Ms. Wang:
For a dancer, there is the mental aspect and also the physical aspect. If you're talking about it physically, it’s definitely tough work. But every profession has its hardships, so I don't really think it's a big problem. Just be tough, be strong, and get over the physical aspect.

But mentally, the goal is to keep the passion alive for every show. That is the hardest part, because over time you play the character through rehearsal, dress rehearsals, and then finally you bring it to the audience. It has probably been a thousand times already, but you have to remind yourself that the audience only sees it once.

Mr. Li:
Dancing is just very, very physical. That is probably the most difficult thing. When you're tired, when you're down, what's going to push you to get past that? Just get back up. At Shen Yun, we create an entirely new performance every year, and our standards are world-class. Of course, the training is rigorous and our schedule is busy, but what we do is deeply rewarding and fulfilling for us as artists.

Mr. Jekielek:
Please tell us about that. There will be great days where you almost hit perfection, but then there will be bad days as well. It is psychologically strenuous. How do you get through all that?

Marilyn Yang:
Everyone, no matter who they are, has to go through the hard days. You're always going to have the bad days, the days you don't want to get up. What really gives me hope and keeps me going is knowing that what I do is giving hope to others and realizing how people are so touched and changed by the show.

It is understanding that what I'm doing can make a difference in other people's lives. If that means me getting up and pushing through another painful class with more stretching through all the sore muscles, if that makes a difference in someone's life, then it's worth it for me. That's really what keeps me going.

Mr. Jekielek:
What is the personal sacrifice that might be involved? What is that like?

Mr. Huang:
No matter what field you are in, if you want to achieve greatness, there are always certain sacrifices that you have to make. For me personally, I would say the thing that we sacrifice the most is time, whether it is your personal time, your free time, the time you spend on your hobbies, or time with family. But you can replace that sacrifice with the idea of investing.

You're investing time in the thing that you're working on no matter what field. With the arts, you have to invest a lot of time in order to improve. Look at the artists from the Renaissance period. They spent years on just one piece of art, but what they came up with would go on to inspire people for generations. That’s what we are trying to achieve.

Ms. Yang:
If you want to have a taste of traditional culture and traditional art, perhaps you would go to a museum and look at the paintings. But in the end, it’s just a painting. But Shen Yun is like the canvas coming to life and the colors coming to life and hearing music with it as well. It's not something that you're just watching, it's really an experience.

Mr. Jekielek:
For someone who doesn't know anything about Chinese history and traditional Chinese culture, how would you explain that Shen Yun might be beneficial to their life?

Ms. Yang:
It may seem boring to young people who see it as ancient history. They think, “Why do we need to learn history?” But there are so many stories from history that we can learn from, and history always repeats itself. You can always look back and see how other people handled these situations.

Today’s world is so fast-paced. With all the materialistic things people try to pursue, there's a time window attached to it. These things are not going to last forever. What lasts forever are the core values that you hold inside.

Sarah Veazey:
In Chinese there's a saying that literally means, “The instrument and the soul are one.” In order to be a musician and an artist, you will be channeling your inner self into your art in order to speak to your audience. Nowadays, a lot of people use it to vent their anger, vent their angst and vent their frustration. But someone like Mozart was really trying to reach a higher realm, bring it down to us, and then help us realize there is something bigger and more noble than us out there. We just need to try and reach it.

Mr. Jekielek:
I've spoken with many people about how Shen Yun seeks to portray authentic, traditional Chinese culture. But the orchestra seems to be a completely new art form. You have a full Western orchestra that incorporates traditional Chinese instruments, and the sound is something brand new. Please tell us about this.

Ms. Veazey:
Shen Yun Symphony Orchestra is definitely unique in that it has a really interesting blend of the Eastern and Western instruments. Eastern music and Western music each have a very different approach towards melody and harmony. Eastern music is mainly focused on the melody, the flow of the melody, and how that fits into the bigger picture.

Western music has always been focused on harmony and how it can create tension and resolution within the harmony. By combining these two ways, Eastern with the melody, and Western with the harmony, you are actually creating something that is very traditional. Because what is music? Music is melody with harmony.

Mr. Jekielek:
People talk about how the flow of the performance is remarkable and how everyone is in sync. How is that achieved?

Mr. Li:
You have to really understand that when you're presenting on stage, you're moving together as a team. You're dancing as a team, you're not dancing as an individual. You have so many dancers on stage at the same time. You have to make sure that every single one of these dancers on stage is highly skilled, so it really goes back to our rehearsals.

I actually lead a lot of the rehearsals, so I watch everyone dancing. One person might stick out. I have to fix that movement before we can move on. You can't just leave that one dancer looking like that. If his movements look different you are not synchronized.

Mr. Jekielek:
That's just the dance aspect. There is also the 3-D backdrop, which is totally immersive. It’s the backdrop, the dancing, and the orchestra all working together. It takes a tremendous amount of work and logistics to make this all happen.

Mr. Li:
The simple answer is that we put a lot of hours into rehearsals. From that aspect you'll see that the dancers look in sync, but on a deeper level, what's really in sync are our hearts. The dancers and the musicians believe in the mission of Shen Yun. The mission of Shen Yun is to revive authentic traditional Chinese culture and to present that to the world.

Why do we feel so strongly about this? It's because traditional Chinese culture is something that was almost lost. It's something that the CCP tried to destroy. In our hearts, we feel this is something that needs to be done. It's something that the world should see.

Mr. Jekielek:
It's important to understand why Shen Yun can't perform in China. But at the same time, a lot of the dancers are originally from China.

Mr. Li:
That is very important. Why doesn’t the CCP want people to see authentic, traditional Chinese history? That's because they are atheists and they don't believe in the divine. They only believe in themselves. What do they want the Chinese people to believe? They want the Chinese people to only believe in the CCP.

Going back 5,000 years, China has always been a spiritual nation. The people are not religious per se, but they have always been spiritual. They believe that there is the divine, and that there are spirits and deities that are watching over people, so it drives people to become better.

If I'm in this room by myself and do something bad, I think that nobody is watching me, but the Chinese people believe that there is always somebody watching you. God is watching you and the divine is watching you. That is really a core part of Shen Yun. We want to show that authentic, traditional Chinese civilization has its roots in the divine and spirituality. The CCP is very afraid of that because it is the opposite of their ideology.

Mr. Jekielek:
Their ideology is so important to them.

Mr. Li:
Yes, they want control of the people. My faith and my belief is the practice of Falun Dafa. It's a spiritual practice that believes in the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. Many of the artists of Shen Yun practice Falun Dafa, and that's one of the reasons why Shen Yun is based in New York here in America. The exercises and meditation of Falun Dafa were hugely popular all over China in the 1990s. The government estimated that a hundred million people were practicing Falun Dafa.

Because it was so popular and because it was reawakening the spirituality of China, the CCP began a campaign against it similar to the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square massacre. In 1999, the CCP launched a persecution campaign against Falun Dafa.

It was brutal, and it was nationwide. There are many artists now at Shen Yun who were persecuted, and the persecution is still happening today. When I was in China, when I was growing up, I was scared to tell people that I practiced Falun Dafa because the CCP was persecuting these people. Even when I moved over to America and I had some Chinese friends, I would be afraid to tell them.

But now that I'm older, I say, “What is wrong with having faith? There's nothing wrong with it. What is wrong with believing in truthfulness, compassion and forbearance? When I do things, if there's someone higher up watching me, I should make better decisions. Thinking about society, what if more people were faithful? What kind of decisions would they make?

Mr. Jekielek:
I've been thinking a lot about elite military training. A relative of mine went through military ranger school which was very difficult. Very often people that are involved in these programs have something higher that drives them forward. Please tell us more about that.

Ms Yang:
It's really important to have a compass inside that's always pointing north or else it's really easy to get distracted and lost in today’s society. Faith is what really grounds me.

Mr. Jekielek:
Please tell us about that faith.

Ms Wang:
When I came to school for Shen Yun I was not a practitioner. Most people were practitioners of Falun Gong, and they were very nice. They never said, “You have to do this and that.” But every day they studied the lectures of Falun Gong and did the meditation and exercises, so it was just a natural thing for me. Everyone here was so nice. I thought, “Let me try this too.” Truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance has guided me along my way in my dance career.

Mr. Jekielek:
In traditional China, scholars, musicians, and dancers would all practice meditation and centering. It would be a central part of their scholarship, of their dance, and of their music. How does that apply here?

Ms. Parker:
It's actually very similar. Perhaps our methods are different in modern times, but the idea of meditating or reflecting is basically the same. The practice of just calming down is underrated. People today think, “That's just a waste of time. You’re just sitting there and breathing.” But when you calm down, you can see the bigger picture. You can see everything clearly, and then everything else you do after that is going to feel very different.

Mr. Jekielek:
Perhaps there is some advice for people in what you just described. Please tell us about the culture of Shen Yun Performing Arts.

Mr. Huang:
Shen Yun has a culture of selflessness where you help each other, not just improve yourself. I remember during my first Shen Yun tour, after we finished in each city, we had to break down the show. I saw tenors, sopranos, conductors, and principal dancers all helping with the moving and loading. There are no egos and there are no prima donnas in Shen Yun. That's why we are able to be so successful.

Mr. Jekielek:
I've seen you dance and you do very well at it. I can imagine many people saying, “Oh, you're so great. You're such a fantastic dancer.” How do you keep that from going to your head?

Mr. Huang:
What I try to do is block out the noise and block out all the praise, because that's not going to help you.