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If you’re looking for brilliant ideas and building a tight-knit team in your workplace, forget corporate retreats and loss of trust. Something much more economical and effective is to take your team with you Shen Yun.
Shen Yun
That’s what Chen Meixian did. Meixian is the CEO of Innovision FlexTech Corp in Taiwan, and for the first nine and a half years her business was in the red. Then she saw a performance that renewed her inspiration and turned everything around.
The company boomed in the six months leading up to the company’s 10th anniversary.
To celebrate with her staff, she gave everyone the day off and treated her 60 employees to tickets to what she called the “No. 1 show in the world” and shared the inspiration she gained with the entire team. And what Meixian won was priceless. “Shen Yun’s team’s performance in every aspect and level of the show demonstrates their strong teamwork,” she said.
Shen Yun Performing Arts illustrates how hundreds of people can work together seamlessly when aligned on a common mission, and executives around the world and across industries have taken note. Leaders recognize that corporate culture is an elusive yet powerful force that drives some of the most successful entrepreneurial ventures.
The Classical Chinese Dance Company was founded in 2006 by a small group of elite Chinese performers in New York with a mission to revive traditional Chinese culture and share it with the world. The company has since grown from one to eight equally sized companies touring the world and has performed in over 200 cities worldwide.
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Shen Yun’s exemplary display of teamwork.
The audience is almost immediately impressed by the dancers’ seamless synchronicity. Then they realize that the orchestra is live – perfectly in tune with every move. The ultimate surprise comes when the patented background interacts with the dancers. The strong teamwork between all these moving parts is similar to different teams within an organization: if everyone can work together, they can work wonders.
“It was absolutely perfect,” said Eric ChristiansonCEO of Nutrient. “I have never seen such perfection in the number of dancers at the same time – the movements, the details, all the way down to the placement of the hands, the way the fabric on the uniforms and the dance costumes, were also in perfect harmony. I couldn’t believe it actually happened. It was amazing.”
“You must come and see it for yourself, because it cannot be described by anyone unless you see it,” said Rudy Revak, founder of Global Ventures Partners. “The dancing is so phenomenal… And every time you see people who are so professional and do their talent so well. It’s always great to see the best of the best.”
How can a team work together cohesively?
When everyone is in sync with the company’s mission and core values, they form a team that is bigger and stronger than the sum of its parts. And an organization’s core values are at the center of its culture.
In Shen Yun, Meixian could clearly see the values of truth, compassion, and tolerance.
“I got a lot of positive energy from the show and I believe it will positively impact my work as ‘truthfulness, compassion, tolerance’ is a mindset I want to achieve,” she said. Managing talented individuals takes a lot of wisdom, she said, and the achievements showed her a path to better business management through these values.
Shen Yun is more than just a performance; it is a revival of the beauty and goodness of China before communism. Artists came from all over the world to join Shen Yun’s mission. Many have personally experienced persecution in China by a totalitarian regime at war with traditions, religion and its history. Some of the world’s best classically trained dancers and award-winning musicians are among these performers.
What they have built with Shen Yun has been called groundbreaking, extraordinarily beautiful, and a display of excellence by critics. “You could just feel it, that people loved what they were doing and enjoyed it, and performing seemed to be a pleasure for them. And the music, being with the orchestra… I was so close to it, I really felt, only the beauty of the music too,” said Shari Levandowskivice president of Information Technology Services at Reedy Industries.
A strong team sticks together in challenging times.
Of course, a grand mission comes with obstacles. And when Shen Yun began to receive international attention, the Chinese Communist Party did not sit still. Media campaigns, advertisements, and calls to theater executives pressuring them to cancel Shen Yun shows continued for years. Chinese Communist Party agents even resorted to cutting the tires of the Shen Yun tour bus in an effort to stop shows.
But at the end of the day, none of their efforts made a difference. “She [Shen Yun dancers] had to leave China, and that’s just not a free world where you can express yourself and provide such great music and dance and everything else,” said Todd MorganFormer Orlando CEO of the year and founder of Comprehensive Energy Services Inc.
Shen Yun had boldly presented the slogan “China for Communism” in recent years. For 5,000 years, the Empire was built on the core idea of harmony between Heaven, Earth, and humanity. Chinese culture was believed to be divinely inspired, and its values stemmed from spiritual disciplines such as Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Virtues such as benevolence, wisdom, loyalty, decency and justice formed the backbone of traditional Chinese culture and civilization. This is the opposite of what the Chinese Communist Party stands for.
A Shen Yun performance contains many short dance stories, often including a contemporary story set in China. Katrina Lim, businessroundups.org, said“There is no other company in the United States doing this. This is one of a kind,” said Lim. “However, it is just amazing how we can enjoy these dances and I believe in China they said they are not.”
A growing company and a global sensation.
Despite the challenges, Shen Yun has continued to grow. Each year, Shen Yun premieres a brand new production and performs to millions in top theaters around the world, from New York’s Lincoln center and Washington’s Kennedy Center to Vienna’s Burgtheater and Tokyo Opera City.
The Shen Yun Symphony Orchestra also holds its own annual performance at Carnegie Hall, along with a private tour. The company recently launched a new, on-demand streaming platform, Shen Yun Zuo pingiving fans access to exclusive video content.
Academy Award-winning actress Kate Blanchett attended a performance and said it was “An extraordinary experience for us and the children”. It also caught the attention of former Grammy Awards senior manager, Omega Medina, who said after seeing a show, “I feel blessed to have witnessed this magnificent event.” These influential minds and the growing number of CEOs and modern professionals rushing to see a Shen Yun Performing Arts show are onto something—because don’t we all want to learn from the best?
Inspire your team and yourself with tickets to the next one Shen Yun production near you.
