Keller Auditorium Management Stands Behind Hosting the Embattled Shen Yun Dance Troupe This Week
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A few years ago, Jane Christensen of Camas, Wash., dragged her husband and teenage son to see a dance performance by Shen Yun in downtown Portland. The traveling Chinese troupe is well known around town for its omnipresent marketing campaign that rolls out once a year, with billboards advertising a show about “China Before Communism.”
The 2025 billboard features a beautiful young dancer taking a flying leap in front of a golden-hued heavenly kingdom. It’s visible above Interstate 5 and Southeast Powell and McLoughlin Boulevards, among pretty much every other commuter-heavy thoroughfare in and around the city.
Christensen plunked down $300 for the three tickets. She didn’t know anything about Shen Yun, other than that her aunts in Arizona deemed the show marvelous.
“My son did not want to go because he was 14, and I said, look, it’s good to enlarge your cultural experience, blah blah blah,” she says. “So we went and, at the break during the show, we were like, this is a little weird.”
At intermission, the Christensen family Googled Shen Yun to figure out what exactly they were watching on the Keller Auditorium stage. They learned that Shen Yun Performing Arts was created in 2006 by the persecuted Chinese religious movement Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa. Founded in China in the ’90s, its values include the importance of movement and meditation and adherence to the teachings of founder Li Hongzhi.
The Christensens felt uneasy but continued into the Keller for the second act. When the religious messaging ramped up, the family walked out before the end of the show.
Later that night over dinner, the family learned that Falun Gong is also behind The Epoch Times, a publication (and yet more billboards) that gained prominence after 2016 by promoting right-wing conspiracy theories and President Donald Trump. The Trump ties did Christensen in.
Thoroughly skeeved out, she started calling and writing letters to board members of the Portland’5 Foundation to demand they stop hosting Shen Yun at the Keller, a city-owned venue. Shen Yun has swung through the auditorium annually for nearly two decades, save for some dates rescheduled due to the pandemic. Portland’5 Centers for the Arts is part of the regional government agency Metro.
She got zero response.
In 2025, Christensen would have even more reason to be alarmed as the group behind the classical Chinese dance program returns to the Keller stage through Jan. 23.
A series of investigative articles published by The New York Times starting in August alleged that Shen Yun abuses young performers, including discouraging them from seeking medical care for injuries sustained during performances, pressing them to work long hours for low or no pay, and forcing them to endure emotional abuse and manipulation. The New York State Department of Labor has since opened an inquiry into Shen Yun. (Disclosure: Rachel Saslow is married to a New York Times reporter, but he was not involved in the Shen Yun coverage.)
Nearly all of the performers were sent to Shen Yun as children, some as young as 11, by family members who were ardent Falun Gong practitioners, the Times found. Performers reported dancing on dislocated kneecaps and sprained ankles and stitching their own wounds with hotel sewing kits. They received no formal medical attention for the injuries because the group believes true healing is a spiritual pursuit. Shen Yun and Falun Gong representatives denied discouraging medical treatment.
Content retrieved from: https://www.wweek.com/culture/2025/01/21/keller-auditorium-management-stands-behind-hosting-the-embattled-shen-yun-dance-troupe-this-week/.
