Birmingham recently hosted 'Shen Yun - 5000 years of Civilisation live on stage'. A festival of folk dance. A cornucopia of capering in a Cathayan context.
FROM SNOWCAPPED Tibetan peaks down to boundless Mongolian grasslands, timeless ethnic and folk dances fill Shen Yun’s stage with color and energy, as resounding drums awaken the dusty plateaus of the Middle Kingdom.
Sounds like harmless fun. Anyway, someone went to a recent performance in Miami:
After some more dancing, the finale opens with goons killing a peaceful Falun Dafa gathering through modern dance in front of a digital background of Shanghai. It is a gathering because they are all wearing polo t-shirts that say “FALUN DAFA IS GOOD” in Chinese, and the sky darkens as they are all beaten. But then, a giant CGI Buddha rises from the horizon and completely destroys the skyline like that one scene from Independence Day. The remaining practitioners fly through the air to Buddhist heaven and everyone is reunited with their loved ones. The end!
Yes, it's the gongers, quite literally opposing Chinese communism through the medium of interpretive dance. And why not? Beijing uses traditional Chinese culture for its own purposes so there's no reason why its opponents shouldn't.