Global dance group Shen Yun faces inquiry over underage labour practices

New York: For years, New York labour regulators stood by while a prominent dance company headquartered in the US state relied on children and teenagers to stage shows worldwide, earning tens of millions of dollars per season but offering little or no pay to the underage performers.

That changed when the State Department of Labour opened an inquiry into the group, Shen Yun Performing Arts, which is operated by the Falun Gong religious movement from a guarded, 160 hectare campus in Orange County, north-west of New York City.

Chang Chun-Ko, a former Shen Yun dancer who joined the group as a child, worked at least 65 hours a week. Credit: The New York Times

Falun Gong, a religion that is banned in China, has been persecuted by the Chinese government for almost three decades.

Shen Yun bills itself as “a brilliant artistic revival and celebration of China’s rich cultural heritage” of “China before communism”.

The US agency, which is tasked with enforcing laws on child labour, overtime and the minimum wage, declined to specify what it was examining. But the inquiry was opened following questions from The New York Times, which in August documented numerous instances of what legal experts and former performers describe as questionable labour practices by the group.

Shen Yun requires performers to keep gruelling tour schedules and to train under abusive conditions, former performers have said.

Many of its young dancers and musicians were the children of ardent Falun Gong practitioners and had travelled from overseas to enroll in school at Shen Yun’s headquarters, Dragon Springs. They received full scholarships, plus room and board, and were told performing was part of their studies. Many received no pay in their first year on tour.

“It seems like it’s perfectly reasonable,” said Eugene Liu, a violinist who said he performed in 200 Shen Yun shows over two years starting at age 15. He never received more than $US300 ($460) a month. “But if you then consider the fact that these are all people with no ability to negotiate any kind of labour, wage situation, then I don’t know how this stands up.”

Indeed, Shen Yun appears to have spent years violating a state law designed to protect underage performers, the Times has found. The law requires performance groups to obtain state certification before using performers who are younger than 18, and it requires those performers to have work permits.

After joining the dance company Shen Yun Performing Arts as a student musician, Eugene Liu played in 200 shows but never received more than $US300 in monthly pay. Credit: The New York Times

The law also governs working hours, rest time and education, including provisions for employers to provide time during the workday for academic instruction. And it specifies that 15 per cent of a performer’s earnings go into a trust account, though it doesn’t address whether or how much the performers should be paid.

Former performers said their schooling during months on tour largely consisted of writing in journals between shows or filling out homework packets. They were not aware of having work permits or trust accounts.

The law does offer an exemption for performers “in a church, academy or school, including a dancing or dramatic school”, but Michael Maizner, an entertainment lawyer who specialises in labour issues, said that exemption would apply to something like a school pageant or choir, not a professional tour group such as Shen Yun.

Shen Yun has used underage performers for nearly 20 years but it had not been certified before applying in late September, representatives of the Labour Department said. The application was approved, and Shen Yun must now give the department a 30-day notice if it plans to use children in a performance in New York state, officials said.

Shen Yun’s leaders have strenuously defended their labour practices. They denied breaking any laws and said that the youngest performers are not employees but students who receive a learning opportunity and often get a stipend.

“The vast majority of students will tell you this is their dream come true, and the parents rave about the positive changes in their children,” Shen Yun’s representatives, Ying Chen and Levi Browde, said in a statement.

They said the students “are not employees under the factors authorities use to define those terms under federal law”.

“Therefore,” they said, “the allegations that they are not treated properly as employees are denied.”

It is not unusual for performing arts groups to pay students and novice performers nominal amounts. But few, if any, such groups rely on them to the extent that Shen Yun does, the Times found.

Combining elements of acrobatics and ballet, the group had eight troupes that collectively performed more than 800 shows on five continents, including Australia, during its most recent season.

Banners promoting Shen Yun 2024 at the Capitol Theatre, Sydney.Credit: Kate Geraghty

Former dancers and musicians said individual troupes could perform more than 100 shows per season and that no troupe employed enough professionals to stage a show without student performers, an assertion Shen Yun’s representatives disputed.

Evan Glickman, a percussionist, spent two years with Shen Yun starting at age 24 and was paid about $US35,000 a year, he said. In his troupe, about two-thirds of the musicians were students, he said.

“The students did everything,” said Glickman, who quit the show in 2016, exhausted by its rigorous touring schedule. “That place would not run if they had to pay real musicians, like every other organisation in the country does.”

Former performers told the Times they worked from early morning until close to midnight while on tour. The young performers carried and set up heavy equipment, rehearsed, performed up to two shows a day and spent hundreds of hours on cross-country bus rides, according to former performers and written schedules.

Shen Yun’s guarded compound in upstate New York. New York State labour regulators said they had not previously opened an investigation into Shen Yun because they had received no complaints about the group. Credit: The New York Times

A tour schedule from December 2016 showed that one Shen Yun troupe was slated to perform or travel on nine consecutive days without a break, including a 17-hour bus trip from Michigan to Texas.

A former Shen Yun bassoonist, Andreas Spyropoulos, recalled leaving a venue after a show and driving through the night towards another city, only to stop at a motel where multiple people had to sleep in each room.

Others said male performers were sometimes told to stay on the tour buses in overnight shifts in case Chinese government agents tried to sabotage the vehicles.

Shen Yun’s representatives said the accounts described in this article were “extreme” examples that were “well beyond day-to-day norms in terms of hours, duties, travel schedules, etc”. They said it was “quite rare” and voluntary for performers to guard the bus.

In a YouTube video posted last year, a current Shen Yun dancer, Sam Pu, described the arduous touring schedule as positive.

In the video, Pu narrated a full day of work, starting in his hotel room around 7.30am, continuing through a performance and ending back at the hotel at 11.20pm.

“I know my schedule looks really tiring,” Pu said, “but the thing is, I find it very meaningful that I am able to share the values of my culture with people all around the world.”

In a text message, Pu told the Times that he has never felt forced to do anything as a performer for Shen Yun and that he had plenty of breaks to relax while on tour.

“It’s also worth mentioning that, unlike some other dance companies where artists have to cover their own travel and lodging or even take on side jobs just to make ends meet, Shen Yun covers everything for us,” Pu said.

Falun Gong-linked Shen Yun dance troupe, which is based in New York, failed to secure a booking at a WA theatre in 2020.Credit: Must Do Brisbane

Aside from the demanding schedules for student performers, Shen Yun stands apart from other large dance groups for the amount of money it has amassed while paying relatively small sums to its performers. In its most recent tax return, the company reported assets of more than $US265 million.

The American Ballet Theatre in New York City had only a fraction of that amount in recent years, tax records show. But its apprentices earn a starting salary of $US986 per week under its contract with the American Guild of Musical Artists. The performers were also eligible for overtime, a benefit that former Shen Yun performers said they did not receive.

Although Shen Yun’s practices have been in place for years, the state Labour Department did not open an investigation because the agency had never received a formal complaint, officials said. Representatives declined to comment on why the agency had opened the current inquiry.

The department has been cited in the past for inadequately enforcing the child performer laws.

In 2017, an audit by the New York state comptroller’s office found that the agency had taken a “reactive” approach of investigating only based on complaints.

“Complaints are less likely to come from children,” the auditors said, “particularly if both the parents/guardians and employers violate the law.”

The Labour Department disputed the audit’s findings and methodology at the time. In a statement this month, an agency spokesman said that since 2023, the department had conducted six proactive child labour sweeps and initiated more than 1300 child labour investigations. He said the department encouraged “workers of any age who believe their rights were violated to file a complaint”.

Legal experts say there are exceptions to state and federal minimum wage laws related to students, apprentices and volunteers. Shen Yun has often paid its student performers less than minimum wage, former dancers and musicians said.

“My suspicion is that they are treating these children and young people, even if they’re not minors, as maybe volunteers, maybe apprentices, and they’re using that as justification for not paying them,” said Michael Minkoff, an employment lawyer in Manhattan. “That doesn’t mean it’s legal by any stretch of the imagination.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.