The Dance Cult You Haven't Heard of...YET! And Curious Queue #4

I can almost hear you right now. WHAT? Another cult episode? This one came to me via my eldest's partner, Josh. Thanks for sending me the video that spurred on this episode. And I wanted to shout out a listener, Grace, who I got to catch up with in person last week. I hope you have a FANTASTIC junior year. You are wonderful, Grace.

Back to the episode, though. If you watched the Netflix series, Dancing for the Devil: the 7M Tik Tok Cult, then you'll be interested to learn they weren't the first dance cult. Not even close.

Let's get into it!

First, what is a cult? 

First, what is a cult? From a book titled, The Cult Files, authors Leo Moynihan and Sam Pilger say, "The word, 'cult,' stems from the Latin cultus, meaning 'care, cultivation, worship.'" 

And the authors remind us, "Cults don't have to mean danger, abuse, and death. Many have offered simpler, more innocent incentives." And they give an example, the Prince Philips movement in the South Pacific that worshipped the UK's Duke of Edinburgh, as an innocuous cult.

Falun Gong - The Dance Cult You HAVE NOT Heard of, til now

Today's conversation centers around a cult that began just a few years after the tragedy at Tienanmen Square. I watched an excellent two-part YouTube series on their roots and where they are now, and I'd highly recommend you do the same, and give SPECTACLES a subscribe, too.

In the first video he explains. It was early on the morning of April 25th, 1999 in China. A crowd had gathered in Beihai Park and then marched to a central government complex, Zhongnanhai. This group had no banners, no megaphones, still, though, the government saw it as a protest.

Sources and Materials

Huge shout out to Spectacles on YouTube's two-part documentary on this cult. PLEASE watch them and subscribe to his channel with this link

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-21/inside-falun-gong-master-li-hongzhi-the-mountain-dragon-springs/12442518

Netflix series, Dancing for the Devil: the 7M Tik Tok Cult

Shen Yun: Dance–with a cult message thrown in from Foundations with Janet dot org

Stepping into the Uncanny, Unsettling World of Shen Yun by Jia Tolentino from The New Yorker