Shen Yun

Boring, boring and overrated!!! Just another cheep Chinese product. My husband and I left in the middle of the performance. That has never happened to us before in LA. Waste of money, time and effort. There are so many other musical performances that are worth your money. I hope you consider this review.

Check it out.. . I did traditional Chinese dancing for two years with an unrelated studio, so I kind of know what I’m talking about here.
DANCING: The dancers are good – very good in fact. And the dancing itself is very authentic (heads up – you’re not watching the Beijing acrobats). The choreography, however, is bland and repetitive.
SINGING: The singing is a mix of traditional and modern. Which is why it sounds a bit off. Look up traditional Chinese opera on Youtube if you want to hear what ‘authentic’ sounds like, but turn down your volume first. You’re welcome.
POLITICS: Oh, don’t worry. I wasn’t going to skip this.. . The commentary and a few dances in the show were –very– political, and done in a distasteful way at that. George Orwell was alluding to Russia in Animal Farm, but he didn’t beat you over the head with it. And Shen Yun, is no George Orwell. I’m all for basic rights, but if Shen Yun was trying to garner sympathy from me, they instead get a two star Unilocal review.
VALUE: Overpriced.

I wish I could write a zero star. This is one of the worst show I have ever seen. We spent more than $ 700 and three hours watching some Bad dance ballet low-​cost cheap production. 2 opera signers were hurting our ears. It was as bad as it can be. I want a refund.

The dancing is mainly one level. Like flips in the air are from the ground and there is no scaffolding. The show takes part on the main stage and on the screen on the back. It was kind of cool actually. I don’t think I’ve seen a screen used that way before.
I thought the dancing and acting was synchronized, but super predictable like get in V formation, now a circle, now one main character dances in the circle, does a split of some sort. Personally, I didn’t feel the dancing was authentic.
There were not enough dancers for the size of the stage, so some of their routines looked so tiny, but I enjoyed the different stories and dances. FYI: Shen Yun does a Tibetan style dance which could offend some of you out there.
There were moments of levity and humor. They also do the Monkey King story, which I thought was super fun and I giggled like a kid.
There is a lot of religious connotation and I found it interesting to watch how a Buddha-​based (just guessing here on the religion) religious group would depict Buddha helping the world. I’ve never seen anything like that in a live performance.
The opera singers are terrible, except the guy. Like bring ear plugs. I’m serious.
The second act was better than the first too.
I would go again in a few years.

Watch us dance, join our cult!
(Google «Facts about the so-​called Shen Yun performance by the Falun Gong».)
And I am not giving them a one-​star because they are a cult, I’d still give Cirque du Soleil five-​stars if they turned out to be a cult. I am giving them a single star because the dancing was average, the opera singing was out of place, and the choreography was horrendous. All to many times a dance would «end» with everyone on the floor with a pregnant pause, only to trick the audience into clapping, and then get up and dance again.
I donated to the church, errr, I paid $ 60 for seats in the Loge section at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Not bad but the show was only worth $ 35 tops.
The biggest pop of the night was for the orchestra. It’s pretty bad when you go to a dance review and the band gets the most buzz.
Let me try to recap the show for you.
Boring dance, boring dance, boring political-​statement dance, female opera singer (song one), female opera singer (song two), boring dance, boring dance, female opera singer, boring dance.
Intermission.
Boring dance, semi-​interesting cup dance, boring dance, male opera singer (song one), male opera singer (fake «encore», song two), semi-​interesting spinning doilies dance, boring political-​statement dance, we’ll be back next year, thank the orchestra, boring dance. Bows.
Mike drop.

Show: 2 stars
Price: –1 star
Short version: Bring a flask.
Long version:
Holy crap these reviews are brutal! But I have to concur with the rest of them. If you were expecting a Chinese rendition of Ka at the MGM Grand in Vegas with a 100-​ton rotating cube of death and flames and people flying through the air… this isn’t that. Actually that was worth $ 200 and I’ve seen it 3 times now. This, well, was not. Not remotely.
Ok, if I saw this show for free, it would’ve been entertaining for maybe 20 – 30 minutes and then I’d go do something else. If I’d paid $ 20 I would’ve been somewhat satisfied and would’ve definitely stayed through the whole thing. For $ 200 this was simply not worth it. How dare they charge these kinds of prices for such substandard performances and lackluster music?
The costumes were easily the best thing about the experience. But as others have said, the dancing was repetitive and nothing really stood out from one act to the next. But then there were some really bizarre acts having to do with tourists taking photos of protestors and being thrown in prison only to be murdered. Yes, really. WTF was up with that? The little kids sitting in front of us were at times amused but mostly bored. Thank goodness for intermission where I ran to get a few shots of whiskey before stumbling back into the theater in a buzzed daze where I mostly nodded off for the second half.
No amount of liquor can prepare you for the shrill, shrieking banshee noises that emanate from the stage during the «opera» acts. Some opera can be very pleasant to sit through. This was… this was some form of torture. It harshed my buzz, and I was none too pleased to be jerked out of my complacent state by what was clearly a human voice but affected more of a «nails-​on-​blackboard» tonality.
In short, if someone can get you to go for free, and pay for some booze, you may have a good time. I paid $ 12 for a Jack n coke plus $ 200 for two tickets plus $ 9 for parking plus $ 50 for a lame lunch at the Pinot Café across the way. No bueno.

Wow… I sure wish we would have looked on here before buying tickets to this show. At first you are thinking… ok, this is nice. There are some very colorful outfits and nice dancing. But then the announcers come out to introduce the next act and it’s almost the same thing… and that repeats for the next 3 HOURS!!! They throw in a little random religious opera here and there. which kind of makes it feel like a low budget variety show. There is no set, just a big projector with cheesy animation in the background. Most of the show the projector is shining on the dancers faces so it just seems out of place.
All in all it is really just a religious propaganda to try to get people to join their cult or else the world will be sucked up by earthquakes and fire. The last thing you expect to see when you are planning on seeing a beautiful show on 5000 years of Chinese culture.
I think the theaters that allow this show to be performed should do more research on it before deciding if it is really something its community should be subjected too.

I was expecting a dance show, but it turn out to be a protest for Chinese government from Dafa, namely Fa Lun Gong.
A few dance shows are not original, the «Hero Yang Zhi» is distorted from the original work.
Some of the shows are good and the dancers are professional, but it is too heavily religious involved by Dafa. You will see the religious persecution probably in between every two dance shows, and in the end of each religious persecution, the «Dafa» fly out from the screen and save the world. Some of them are even ridiculous.
I feel so regret for having «donate» $ 60 for this organization. If there were an negative score, I would definitely choose it. 1 star is too high for this show.

Boring. Doesn’t even deserve one star.
I’ve been all over Asia for 20 years, seen local dance shows in every country, been to most of the places the mentioned, seen most of the original ethic dances appearing in this show. I love dance. My wife was born in Hong Kong, parents from China. We both agreed — a disaster.
This was boring. Same leaping moves, everything translated into ballet style gestures, noble looking up into the sky with awe struck expressions, same waving hand motions. No lighting, no dynamics, no pacing, no style. All the life was sucked out of the real Chinese dance. Boring.
Western style opera sung in Chinese with banal lyrics? Why?
The stupid animated backdrop with NO other props?
The lame beauty contestant looking announcers pushing their religious agenda and trying to out cute each other?
Horrible orchestra music that sounded all Westernized w/​a few Chinese instruments thrown in?
Ignore all the propaganda they throw at you. Everything was a lie, pushed by a cult-​like religious organization. Banal songs, banal music, banal choreography. Imagine the show L. Ron Hubbard would produce. I’m sure the positive reviews are generated by members of this «cult.»
I’ve seen dozens of greats shows in China whose sets, performance, music, and creativity put this to shame. The earthiness, excitement, and drive of real Chinese dance performances is absolutely wonderful. And I’ve taking maybe 30,000 images in Asia, never a problem. Another cult lie.
Remember, I’ve seen real dance in Thailand, Bali, China, Vietnam. It’s great, I’ve spent 4 hours watching one performance, probably would have starved if my wife hadn’t dragged me away. Flying into San Francisco in a few weeks to see the Chinese New Year celebrations.
Spread the world, don’t see this show. We should start a class action suit. All the money you pay is going for more adverting to feed their money machine.

I wish I would have read the Unilocal reviews before I bought my $ 100+ tickets (thank God I didn’t spend more…) — I love going to theatre, ballet, opera; etc. However, this time I actually left at intermission (never before in my life) What a complete waste of money & time — I could have gone somewhere better and watched the football playoffs — sooooooooooo disappointed. And I kept waiting for it to get better — never happened.
The cheesy huge screen in the back of the stage — SUCKED
The only good thing I can say about the show was that the costumes were very colorful
Little to no acrobatics and pretty much an all around BORING performance — the commercials on tv and the video on their site pretty much sums it up
Take my advice — DON’T GO !!!

Good Lord, what a horrible experience this was. I got tickets for my girlfriend and I (she’s from China), figuring it’d be a nice show celebrating «5,000 years of Chinese culture». FALSE ADVERTISING. The show itself is boring. No sets, just a large screen in the background with PlayStation One graphics and maybe 10 dancers onstage at any given time. The first couple numbers were fun, but it’s the same thing throughout the entire show! There are no acrobats in this at all.
Still, I thought, my girlfriend will enjoy it because we’re listening to Chinese music and dance. But wait, the music isn’t even authentic! It was half Chinese, half Western most of the show. But nothing was worse than the propaganda. Right before the intermission we got a skit showing modern-​day China. A religious group is persecuted and one man is beaten to death by the Chinese government. During this act it got really awkward in the theater. What were we watching?! Literally the act before was Mongolian dancers a thousand years ago and all of a sudden we’re watching beatings and «injustices» as the emcees called it (they were really annoying). I should have left at intermission…
The show was filled with references to this religious group (which my girlfriend told me is viewed as a cult in China) and anti-​Chinese government messages. It just felt so out of place. I was going to see Chinese culture, not some protest. The final act was the worst though. Spoiler Alert: Beijing is destroyed by lava and fire and this group’s god comes down and restores it (and drives away the government). I couldn’t believe what I was watching. My girlfriend got very disturbed and wanted to leave immediately. Thankfully the show ended after that.
So please, avoid Shen Yun like the plague. It’s a cheesy show (was is the budget to this thing? The seats are expensive enough!) with repetitive dances (no creativity) and garbage propaganda. Even from my point of view (neutral to the CCP), it was forced and out of place. Bottom line, this is NOT the show I paid to see.

Ok, I read the other reviews and I was VERY worried I spent $ 200+ buying 2 tickets for a Shen Yun 2013 with my 4 years 1 month old daughter.
But based on them advertising a beautiful «princess» leaping in the air on a billboard in the Irvine Spectrum, my daughter really wanted to go see this show.
She has taken piano lessons, ballet lessons, intro conversational chinese, and been to 2 authentic Hawaiian cultural luaus (Maui & Oahu), so she was well prepared for this dance show … culturally speaking. But even she lost interest towards the end, more on that later.
Here goes:
1) IT IS NOT AN ACROBATIC SHOW! There I said it. If you are expecting people jumping over barrels and balancing saucers on their nose with a stick, THIS IS NOT THE SHOW FOR YOU!
2) This is a CLASSICAL Chinese Dance show that uses a combination of ballet and gymnastics to interpret Chinese history. And yes, there is 5000 years to work with.
3) There are tumbles, cartwheels, backflips, etc but that’s not the entire show.
4) It has a LIVE orchestra with both Western and Chinese instruments.
5) Each year the show is different and they’ve been putting on this show for 7 years (according to the Emcees)
So what is the show? Well I just went today 1÷19÷2013 at Segerstrom Hall and here are the details … good and bad.
Good:
Traditional Chinese Costumes — Stunning, beautiful, the BEST I’ve seen! Better than those traditional Chinese TV Drama & Movie = A++
Choreography — Beautiful, fresh, new, stunning! Makes my chinese dance performance in college look amateurish = A+
Music — I LOVE classical chinese music and hearing it LIVE & with new composition is music to my ears = A+
Visual Effects — Breathtaking, unique, very different! I love how they use the wide screen background as a backdrop and movie screen. = A+
Dancers — Exquisite, beautiful, and VERY talented. = A+
Emcees — A man and a woman speak both Mandarin and English to introduce each skit. They are funny and entertaining. Also it’s very traditional for Chinese shows to have emcees. They are the best I’ve seen. = A
In the 2013 edition, the show had:
* several long-​sleeved dances
* handkerchief dance
* bowl dance (yes they balance bowls on their heads while dancing, NOT an acrobatic show)
* Monkey King skit
* Li Bai Poet skit
* Shao Lin Temple skit
and much more …
The show had plenty of heavenly faeries and emperors and warriors.
Think «Forbidden Kingdom» … NOT «Disney’s Mulan».
BAD:
* the operas — completely unnecessary. The lyrics are completely inappropriate for such a show. I had to AVOID reading the lyrics on the big screen because I did not pay $ 200 to have religious banter shoved down my throat.
* 2 completely inappropriate skits. I can’t go into details about the skits but it’s religious propaganda again and made me and my daughter (and other people) feel VERY uncomfortable. Hence she lost interest in the show after seeing such unpredictable violence on stage. If you have a kid, you are in for a shocking show. Be prepared as a parent to explain … a lot.
* There were advertising banners of beautiful girls beating a drum and the famous «fan dance» and they were not in this show at all.
I think if they are going to PROMOTE a show with certain images that we as an audience should SEE those performances.
Bottom Line — 80% of the show was absolutely fantastic! I would go see that 80% over and over again! And I would pay $ 200+ just to see those parts, especially if they add in new/​different choreography, music, and skits each year.
They need to get rid of the 20% crap. I did NOT pay money to see uncomfortable situations in what is supposed to be a happy, lively, cultural show. Save the violent & depressing stuff for another type of show.

Like others, I got duped into buying tickets for this show after looking at their promotional material that depicted a woman in an oriental costume jumping through the air, very acrobatic-​like.
I went to see this with my fiancée at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion a few years ago. While the costumes were nice, the acts we BORING. I don’t know what some of the reviewers below were smoking, but there were NO acrobatics. In between acts, they would talk their propaganda. I have to tell you, the best part of the night was the opera singer who put me to sleep. That turned out to be the best way to pass the time.

There are no acrobat acts!
Lets get this straight, this show is boring!
I’m not sure why all these reviews state otherwise. This show is painful to watch. BTW, Unilocal is not for reviewing shows, However, I’d hate to know that based on all these 5 star reviews one of my fellow Unilocalers gets suckered into watching this show.
SAVE YOUR $!

I’ve followed Shen Yun in different cities for a few years and probably watched it close to 10 times now. I LOVE IT! It is pure and harmonious. It gives me a glimpse of how splendid the heaven could be. It also shows me how people with faith could endure the suffering. I am amazed on how these dancers could be so precise as a team. Not to mention that it is much more challenging to see the whole team dance flawlessly all in sync compared to the solo dance people see else where.
The female dancers’ gestures are very feminine and elegant, it is something very unique in eastern culture and it is something hard to see now.
During the show, the orchestra play the music naturally, I didn’t notice how difficult it is until I see a feedback from a UCLA music professor saying how difficult to combine eastern and western music/​instruments together.
I respect other people’s negative comments about the show but if they can understand more about Chinese culture and the content or message Shen Yun is presenting, they might appreciate the show more.

This show is heavenly! I first watched the show in 2008 and have became a loyal fan ever since. It is the most beautiful and elegant show I’ve ever watched and was later accompanied by live orchestra!!! To see more than 100 artists working effortlessly to bring Chinese culture to live often move me into tears. And they are truly talented or they won’t be able to come up with new programs every year; the original music, choreography, hand-​made customs… I’m in awe watching their performance every time! I always recommend it to all my friends and it is something beyond words can describe. I heard audience around me saying that these dancers are like angels from heaven because they so pure and graceful. I feel that my soul was inspired, cleansed and nourished just by watching this show… as if they took me to another world… Yes, there are few programs that are related to the religious persecution in China because that is the ongoing and most unbelievably cruel crime that has to be stopped. I applaud them for doing the right things against the evil Chinese communist government.
In fact, my husband and I love it too much that we have bought tickets and drove to San Diego so that we can watch it at least one or two weeks ahead of most Los Angelenos.

It’s a beautiful show! I gasped with surprises. I have seen many shows but never seen a show like this, beautiful and pure. I heard great reviews. Went with my friend in 2011. We had good seats close to the orchestra, where we don’t have to tilt our heads to see the screen, which neck straining. I can’t see the dancers as up close as the those in the front rows but the amazing backdrop gave me several surprises.
Beautiful and original! I loved the backdrop and how they interacted with the dancers on stage as bring the stories to live.
It’s about a two and half hour show and give me a full 5000 year history of Chinese culture. I heard they have brand new programs every year so unlike most other shows I’ve watched in the past, it’s always the same theme.
All in all, my friend and I had a wonderful time and I am happy that we had this opportunity to watch the show.

Horrible! Do not waste $ 180 per ticket like I did. We went to see the show in Costa Mesa last week, after seeing its ads on TV, thinking it’s a chinese dance performance. Boy were we wrong, it seems to me like a fundraiser type of meeting for Falun Gong. The acts were all politically charged with cult promoting propaganda, .
The acts were boring, most of the dancers were not professionally trained and you can tell. I felt so bad for taking my mom there, and like most people we left during intermission… with a bad taste in our mouths.
I can’t believe it’s legal for them to disguize it as a dance performance and rob people of their hard earned money.

If I have 2 words of advice, it’d be ‘Skip it!’.
I can not believe this show could survive running this long. And according to them, they have 3 companies of equal size touring around the world. WOW! I, like many other people, fell for the SPECTACULAR marketing campaign! I wish the show could have lived up to its advertisement, but it failed miserably! We have seen much better dances with prettier costumes in China than these at ¹⁄₁₀ of the price!
The only thing that even earned this show 1 star was the dancers. They were well-​trained, technical, and graceful. However, the choreography was boring and lacked creativity. They don’t do the dancers justice. I think they were capable of performing much better dances if given the opportunity.
The political undertone was really annoying. I came to enjoy a show, not to listen to some political propaganda which was played out all during each dance number. The most awful part of the show were the 3 singers who sang like ducks on a hanging rope about to die! OMG!!! Every one of the songs was about 5 sentences long and repeated over and over again! I wish I had brought ear plugs to plug my ears!!!
I feel terrible for my fiancé as he actually bought these tickets for me for my birthday. I could tell he felt really bad. I felt worse because I know he spent an arm and a leg for these center seat tickets! for $ 180 each!!! Total waste of money! I’m sure knowing what we know now. We won’t even go if it were free!

I should have found this on Unilocal first. The reviews are exactly right.
I saw this at the OC performing art center in Costa Mesa this past Saturday. I had an extra ticket and took my dad. Oh man, I thought he would start yelling at me for taking him to a cheesy show. At times I saw him fall asleep which made me crack up because I was falling asleep too. I sat on the 3^rd tier which is like the nose bleed section and it was practically empty, going to the restroom was no problem, no lines.
It’s true that it’s cheesy and nothing spectacular at all. I was so bored I kept eating my bag of gummy bears which I got reprimanded for eating during the show. The ushers here were older people, they were nice but sheesh, it wasn’t like I was eating chips. Anyways, I was hoping to see more acrobatic but to my disappointment, nope. The dancing were the same. The first was cool but than it got to repetitive and boring. I asked my dad, umm, you want to leave during intermission? Surprisingly he said we’ll stay till the end. I think he enjoyed sleeping in the dark with chinese orchestra.
The parts of propaganda, I could do without. They shouldn’t be showing things like that because it’s deceiving people. People who actually paid to see chinese acrobatic show. No wonder the tickets were not refundable. I think my little 6 year old cousin would have liked the show.
On a good note, the seats at Segerstrom Hall, there are no bad seats really. You can see the stage from every angle. But the walkway to the seats are narrow. And alot of steps so it’s harder for the older folks like my dad.
Unfortunately, the best part of the show for me was when it ended. I didn’t wait for the lights to come and told my dad ‘let’s book it’. I learned my lesson, never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever again. I wasted 2 hours in the middle of the day but I hung out with my dad so daughter and father time.
I’ll just rent a kung fu movie from netflix, it’s more entertaining.
I parked at SouthCoast Plaza and walked across to the hall. Otherwise, it cost $ 10 for the parking structure. Walking is good for you. hehe