Two former dancers of the riveting dance group Shen Yun have filed a lawsuit accusing the dance company of creating brutal working conditions for its dancers and knowingly engaging in forced child labor. Named in the lawsuit as defendants are Shen Yun, the founder of a faith-based movement, Li Hongzhi, and the dance company’s affiliated school, Fei Tian Academy.
The latest suit was filed by the two former dancers, Sun Zan, 32, and Cheng Qing Ling, 28. The lawsuit comes on the heels of a similar complaint filed in November 2024 and a New York Times investigation that looked into the dance company, its contentious history with the Chinese government, and the claims of brutal working conditions for its dancers.
When it was first formed in 2006 in New York by a group of classical Chinese artists, the company’s intent was to showcase the beauty of traditional Chinese culture through music, dance, and storytelling. The group quickly grew in popularity, performing for over a million people each year across 36 countries.
Their world tour propelled them to popularity and shined a light on China's spiritual movement, Falun Gong, a practice that focuses heavily on meditation and self-improvement.
This movement emerged in China in the early '90s under the movement's founder, Li Hongzhi. It would not take long for the Chinese Communist government to shut down activities related to Falun Gong. Chinese officials went as far as reprimanding those who practiced Falun Gong, and even placed followers of what they described as a cult in detention or rehabilitation camps.
Cheng Qing Ling was just 13 years old when she left her family in New Zealand to move to the U.S. to join the Shen Yun Dance Company in 2010. Sun Zan, who also moved from New Zealand, joined the company in 2018 when he was 15.
Shortly after joining the company, the two young dancers, who are now married to each other, say they experienced brutal conditions that disregarded their medical health and mental well-being.
Sun Zan shared with reporters at NPR that there was one point early in his career with the company where instructors forced him to engage his body in a side split. This resulted in him suffering internal bleeding and a number of tears to his leg muscles that caused “extreme pain for several weeks.”
Both dancers were enrolled in the dance company's affiliated religious school, Fei Tian Academy. He claims that a regular school day consisted of long, grueling dance training.
NPR details that Cheng Qing Ling suffered similar experiences, and that from the moment she joined the dance company and was involved in the affiliated school, she was in “survival mode.” She explains that during the five years she spent at the facility, she lived in fear, always on edge and paranoid about making mistakes or underperforming during dance rehearsals.
She shared with journalists at NPR that during her time there, she would think to herself, “Oh, thank God at least I'm not the one that's being hit this time. Oh, thank God I'm not being verbally abused this time.” That was the only thing she could focus on—not really, “Hm, could I have been treated better?”
Shen Yun has been quick to defend itself from this recent lawsuit and the one filed in 2024. The company says that its operations depend on the medical and mental well-being of its young dancers and that it takes the dancers’ education seriously. It points to the fact that many of its dancers enrolled in Fei Tian Academy regularly do well on standardized tests.
Their response also highlights that they've been a constant target of the Chinese Communist Party. Shen Yun points to a petition that was circulating several years ago in support of the organization. Officials with the dance company maintain, “While a small number of individuals who were performers with Shen Yun many years ago are now helping to spread the CCP's narrative, we are grateful for the large number of our performers who are publicly standing up for us despite CCP pressure.”
