Kay Rubacek

Survived China’s prisons. Now I teach how to stay calm in the age of cognitive capture.

Where do you find hope these days? What gives you your greatest strength to get through difficult times? For me, faith and family give me a tremendous strength and hope. I wrote about this in my book, NOWHERE LEFT TO RUN 10 Steps to Survive Tyranny Today, but what about in the world outside our own homes? …

By

Kay Rubacek

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This Show Gives Me Hope & I Hope You Get to See it Too :)

Where do you find hope these days? What gives you your greatest strength to get through difficult times? For me, faith and family give me a tremendous strength and hope. I wrote about this in my book, NOWHERE LEFT TO RUN 10 Steps to Survive Tyranny Today, but what about in the world outside our own homes? 
 
While news media is of course hugely influential, it is arts and entertainment that really shape our culture. Many youths have music playing through headphones almost 24/7, Americans watch an average of 3 hours of TV a day, many adults stream movies daily, interestingly, even millennials have doubled their poetry reading! Fashion, music, photography, movies, celebrities, shape our future more than the constant rush of the daily news cycle. 
 
Think about the music you listen to, the movies and TV shows you watch, the images you look at on social media… do they give you hope? Do they inspire you to become a better person for you and the people around you?
 
Over the last few years, I’ve been absolutely inspired by one American performing arts company that has made its mission to give people hope. And it’s working! While most theater shows and cinemas have struggled to get viewers back into seats after the pandemic, this show consistently has sell out shows throughout the US and the world. Their success proves that hope sells. The show is New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts and I have a personal connection with it. 
 
It’s so inspiring to hear people walk out of a show exclaiming how it was “a life-changing experience” and “breath-taking” and “uplifting”, and that’s what people consistently experience. And me too. I highly recommend you watch the Shen Yun audience reviews here.  
 
Shen Yun is made in America and it displays on stage traditional Chinese culture which is based in spirituality and the belief in a Creator. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has banned the show in China because they do not want to inspire faith and hope in anything but politics and the Party. This is one reason why I love Shen Yun. It’s run by  courageous artists who fled persecution in China, and despite non-stop CCP propaganda put out against them to try and stop their shows, they have instead grown from a small start up to eight touring companies that perform a whole new program to over a million people every year. They even include some programs on stage that expose the human rights abuses committed by the CCP in modern times. 
 
Putting on a show like this takes guts. And they do it from America because America still supports freedom of speech and freedom of belief, while in communist China those freedoms don’t exist. The Epoch Times recently published a very insightful program with interviews with some of the Shen Yun artists. You can watch it here. 
 
Every time I’ve watched Shen Yun, I feel strengthened in my own faith and in my dedication to my family and my work. I can’t think of any other performance or movie that has had such a consistently profound, positive, and hopeful impact on me. 
 
There’s also a personal reason why I love the Shen Yun show: both my son and daughter are professional dancers in Shen Yun. First my son, Lee, was accepted on a full scholarship to train at their arts academy in Upstate New York, and he later encouraged my daughter to switch from ballet and audition for Shen Yun and she was also accepted. They both were blessed at birth with a dancer’s physique, and love the arts and storytelling. They train hard but their efforts are rewarded with audience members who are deeply touched by their performances.  
 
The dance form of Classical Chinese Dance used in Shen Yun was also a welcome change for my daughter, Grace, who came to love the fluidity and expressiveness of this dance form compared to her previous ballet training. They now have the opportunity of a lifetime to tour the world for a few months every year and inspire people of all cultures and backgrounds to be more kind, hopeful, more faithful in their lives.
 
Here are a few photos of them:
 
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Lee dancing at the 2021 NTD International Classical Chinese Dance Competition, 
where he won Silver Prize in the Junior Boys Division. (Image from The Epoch Times)
 
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Lee (fourth from right) and his Shen Yun dance mates “on top of the world” 
in the Swiss Alps after performing shows in Switzerland in 2022. (Image from Shenyun.org)
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Grace dancing at the 2023 NTD International Classical Chinese Dance Competition, 
where she won Gold Prize in the Junior Girls Division. (Image from The Epoch Times)
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Grace having fun on a break day while touring in California in 2022. (Image from Shenyun.org)
The fact that my own family escaped communism three times (my grandparents fled Russia, my father fled China, and my husband fled the former Czechoslovakia) plus the fact that I spent time in a China prison, I do feel a personal connection with the founders of Shen Yun. I feel proud that they’ve been able to grow, in America, from one company to eight touring companies due to the demand for positive arts and entertainment. And of course, I am proud that my kids not only love dancing with Shen Yun, but that they value its mission of freedom, its values of honesty and kindness, and are being courageous to bring people hope in a time when people need hope the most. 
 
If you haven’t seen Shen Yun before, I sincerely hope that you get the chance to. I often tell people to take the whole family because even kids and teens won’t be bored for a minute because the costumes and storytelling on stage is so active and brilliantly connected to the massive, animated digital backdrop that allows the dancers to fly through the air and through time and space. The variety of stories are at times breath-taking, hilarious, and emotional, and guaranteed to bring out some memorable laughs and even draw a few tears. 
 
Shen Yun is still touring for a few more months this year, so check out the show schedule for your city here and enjoy!
 
Wishing you hope, health, and happiness throughout the year,
Kay xx

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