ANGELA: When I was seven years old, my parents took me to see this show. It was called New Tong Dynasty TV's New Year's Spectacular Show. Most of the people who went to see the show at the time were practitioners. It was a very shabby show, to say the least, very handmade props and not so great costumes. 

ANGELA: Eventually Master Li heard about this performance and started Shen Yun.

LIZ: Shen Yun dancers. Now, this is the part that was fascinating to me. I have seen the banners, I've seen the billboards, the commercials, but I had no idea that it was linked to a cult.

TYLER: You do now. The dance company tours annually. But many don't know the truth behind the dance and the hidden messaging within the performance.

ANGELA: So, Shen means God or Goddess, and Yun is like the feeling behind a movement, the feeling of movements behind gods. Like, only gods can move like this. There's no overall plot line to the performance. It's a bunch of little performances, probably four to five minutes long, of dances with props like sleeves and fans, traditional Chinese dance. And sprinkled in, there are some skits and of course also the propaganda pieces that talk about the persecution of Chinese practitioners in Falun Gong. Oh, it's an absolutely beautiful performance, besides the persecution part.

LIZ: Besides that small detail.

ANGELA: The dancers are of course very well trained. They've been dancing since they were little kids.  The whole thing is beautifully put together. But there's also like a weird undertone to it though. They do opera singing and they're all lyrics written by Master Li and it talks about the end of the world, science is fake, the theory of evolution is fake. It's like not subtle, but it's like sprinkled in. There's like a double goal here. The first one is of course to make money for the cult. There's the propaganda aspect to it. There's like a North American group and that's where Master Li usually is. He tours with the company while they're dancing usually because he's the art director.

LIZ: But isn't he already at every show and Spirit Tyler just creepily watching the young female dancers break their bodies in the name of, wait, what is this one in the name of again? I forgot.

TYLER: I honestly, I've lost the thread.

LIZ: Oh, spiritual, spiritual Enlightenment.

ANGELA: A lot of people have gone to see the shows who aren't practitioners. I'd say most people now are not practitioners. In the early years, it was mostly us buying our own tickets, filling up the seats. But because of the excessive advertising everywhere, people are curious and want to go see it.

LIZ: And what about Angela? Was she too one of those trained dancers?