SYDNEY, Australia—Despite the bright billboards and thousands of flyers advertising Shen Yun Performing Arts ahead of its arrival, Julie Khoury says she was completely blindsided by what she saw onstage on Friday evening.
Khoury, a lawyer who manages a law firm, spoke to The Epoch Times at the Sydney Lyric Theatre in Pyrmont after the show. “I had no expectation because I didn’t know what to expect,” she said. “It’s going to be beyond what you expect. You'll be pleasantly surprised.”
The New York-based dance company opens with the Chinese tale of creation. Smoke billows offstage as a scene from the heavens lights the theater hall. The creator appears and leads an entourage of gods and goddesses to Earth, rolling out China’s 5,000-year history.
The program follows their journey to present-day China, now ruled by communism.
“The thing that I found very sad is that, because of the communism in the country, this beautiful display cannot be shown in China, which is very sad,” Khoury said. “I don’t have much of an understanding of it, so watching it today gave me a bigger appreciation to it.”
Shen Yun was founded by ethnic Chinese to revive the culture that was “almost lost” during China’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. But because of its spiritual and anti-communist messages, the company is banned from performing in its ancestral homeland.
Classical Chinese dance is Shen Yun’s specialty—an art form thousands of years old. Martial artists of ancient times once performed leaps and turns for lords and ladies in palaces. Over the years, this was standardized and then borrowed by other cultures.
“And I didn’t know that gymnastics originated from classical Chinese dancing,“ Khoury said. ”My daughters are all elite gymnasts, and I appreciated the skills and the technique and everything that they did.”
Modern times also feature in Shen Yun’s program. Scenes of religious persecution today, under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), are shown alongside myths about the Monkey King. The sad state of modern youth appears minutes after the jubilant Mongolian ethnic dance.
Nick Sotras and Jackie enjoy Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Sydney Lyric Theatre in Pyrmont on March 20, 2026. Julia Ye/The Epoch Times
Nick Sotras, a building developer who watched the same show on Friday, enjoyed the contrast between modern and traditional. It painted a clear picture of the values Shen Yun seeks to restore.
“Just the way things are moving, progressing in society, it’s pretty spot on with the way the show portrayed it,” Sotras said. “They’ve done a great job. Great storytelling.”
He found it “absolutely disgusting” that Shen Yun was banned from performing in China.
Throughout the program, the dancers wordlessly illustrate values that are all but forgotten today. The expressive gestures of classical Chinese dancecan show courage amid suffering. It can show deep gratitude and belief in a higher power.
Erica Thomas enjoyed Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Sydney Lyric Theatre in Pyrmont, Australia, on March 20, 2026. NTD
Erica Thomas, a school principal who arrived at the theater with a number of her students, witnessed “the values of goodness and of kindness.” Shen Yun showed her “that if you behaved well, you would actually do well in life,” she added. “That’s a key part of it.”
Seeing the beauty of Shen Yun, but also the contrast between old and new; seeing the broken connection between its dancers and their ancestral homeland, the show is vital.
“If you don’t see things from all different sides, you don’t see clearly,” Thomas said. “And I think tonight has been very eye-opening in terms of how this has been portrayed.”
Reporting by NTD, Julia Ye, Chi Yun, and Michael Wing.
