Shen Yun’s Longstanding Labor Practices Attract Regulators’ Scrutiny

For years, New York labor regulators stood by while a prominent dance company headquartered in the 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 in recent months when the State Department of Labor opened an inquiry into the group, Shen Yun Performing Arts.

The agency, which is tasked with enforcing laws on child labor, 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 labor practices by the group .

Shen Yun, which is operated by the Falun Gong religious movement from a guarded, 400-acre campus in Orange County northwest of New York City, requires its performers to keep grueling tour schedules and 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 traveled 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 but never received more than $300 a month. "But if you then consider the fact that these are all people with no ability to negotiate any kind of labor, 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 New York 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.

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 percent 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 Shen Yun 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 specializes in labor 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 had not been certified before applying in late September, representatives of the Labor 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 labor 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 that 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 during its most recent season.

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.

"The students did everything," said Mr. 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 organization 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.

A former Shen Yun bassoonist, Andreas Spyropoulos, recalled leaving a venue after a show and driving through the night toward 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. (Falun Gong, a religion that is banned in China, has been persecuted by the Chinese government for almost three decades.)

Shen Yun's representatives said the accounts described in this were "extreme" examples that were "well beyond day-to-day norms in terms of hours, duties, travel schedules, etc." They added that 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 a positive.

In the video, Mr. Pu narrated a full day of work, starting in his hotel room around 7:30 a.m., continuing through a performance and ending back at the hotel at 11:20 p.m.

"I know my schedule looks really tiring," Mr. 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, Mr. Pu told The Times that he has never felt forced to do anything as a performer for Shen Yun and gets 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," Mr. Pu said.

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 $265 million.

The American Ballet Theater in New York City had only a fraction of that amount in recent years, tax records show. But its apprentices earn a starting pay of $986 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 Labor Department did not open an investigation — because the agency had never received a formal complaint, officials said. They declined to comment on why they opened the current inquiry.

The Labor 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.

Chang Chun-Ko, a former Shen Yun dancer, moved to Dragon Springs from Taiwan at 13 and was paid around $500 a month when she started performing as a student, she said.

In 2019, Shen Yun hired Ms. Chang, then 23, as a professional dancer. Her employment letter said she would be paid $1,000 a month to work 25 hours a week. Ms. Chang said she actually worked at least 65 hours a week.

Since Falun Gong teaches that followers should let go of material attachments, talking about money was seen in Shen Yun as a sign of poor devotion, Ms. Chang said. She said she had a feeling that she was paid too little, "but I didn't dare to ask."

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.