Shen Yun described the threat as the latest in a series of ‘pranks meant to scare theaters and audience members.’
A bomb threat targeting Shen Yun Performing Arts at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts caused an evacuation and road closures on the morning of Feb. 20, hours before the group’s opening night performance in Washington.
D.C. police responded to the scene at about 10:45 a.m. An email received by the theater 15 minutes earlier claimed that a bomb had been placed at the facility, and that it would detonate if Shen Yun’s performance proceeded.
A spokesperson from the U.S. Park Police confirmed the agency had sent officers to the Kennedy Center but declined to offer further details. The spokesperson said the officers were no longer at the theater and directed questions to the Kennedy Center.
The Kennedy Center did not respond to queries from The Epoch Times by publication time.
The incident marks the latest among dozens of similar threats globally directed at Shen Yun, an arts group based in New York state that uses classical Chinese dance and music to showcase China’s ancient civilization before the communist takeover.
The Feb. 20 performance, the first of a 12-show run, is expected to proceed as scheduled at 7:30 p.m., Shen Yun said in a statement.
Shen Yun was founded in 2006 by practitioners of Falun Gong, a meditation discipline based on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The belief is heavily censored in communist China, with the practitioners frequently harassed, jailed, and tortured in a bid to force them to renounce their faith.
The arts group now has eight companies touring around the world simultaneously, performing in hundreds of cities across five continents.
Shen Yun described the threat email as one in a series of “pranks meant to scare theaters and audience members.”
The threats are often written in Chinese and their volume has noticeably surged in recent months as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has escalated its campaign to suppress Falun Gong, Shen Yun noted.
“The CCP fears Shen Yun because the company’s mission is to show ‘China before communism,’ to revive traditional culture, the very culture the CCP spent decades trying to destroy,” the company stated.
“At the same time, as part of each Shen Yun performance, the story of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China, and their courageous peaceful resistance, is also told in a moving way on stage. This is a human rights atrocity the CCP has been trying to hide.”
Levi Browde, executive director of the Falun Dafa Information Center, said he sees it in the same way.
“Whoever is sending these threats is doing so in a coordinated manner and likely has ties back to Beijing,” he said in a statement.
“After all, who else would want to silence Shen Yun and intimidate would-be supporters of Falun Gong? This is an especially dangerous and depraved tactic of transnational repression.”
Ric Grenell, U.S. special missions envoy and interim executive director of the Kennedy Center, blamed the threats on the charged climate that ostracizes anyone deemed to not conform.
“We live in this world now where people who don’t like something are resorting to chaos,” he told The Epoch Times. “We’ve lived through cancel culture, de-banking, all sorts of stuff.
“So we’ve got to fix this.”
Some recent emails have sought to intimidate U.S. lawmakers and other government officials who have voiced support for Falun Gong.
The State Department has denounced the threats. In a statement to The Epoch Times in early February, the department said it condemns “the acts of intimidation” and urges “protection of the right to free expression.”
A department spokesperson further called for the CCP to end its 25-year-long eradication campaign against Falun Gong, noting that it has documented cases of interference against Falun Gong and Shen Yun “in many countries.”
The Epoch Times in December 2024 reported on a secret 2022 meeting during which CCP leader Xi Jinping directed officials to attack Falun Gong internationally through lawfare and disinformation.
Coinciding with this campaign, Browde said, his center has seen a rise in intimidation, harassment, and disinformation targeting Falun Gong and Shen Yun particularly in the United States, often including “misleading, inaccurate, and hate-inciting posts” on social media platforms such as X and YouTube as well as in mainstream Western media outlets.
He said he hopes there is attention to the broader context fueling the escalating threats.
“Demonizing news coverage had consequences and Beijing’s fingerprints are all over this campaign,” he said.