The curtain rose on a group of young students sitting in peace, meditating and reading oversized yellow Falun Gong books. The dancers performed elaborately pantomimed good deeds – helping an old woman with a cane, chasing down a woman who had dropped her purse. But when one unveiled a Falun Gong banner, suddenly a trio of men wearing black tunics emblazoned with a red hammer-and-sickle entered. The communist thugs began beating people up, clubbing and kicking innocent Falun Gong followers.

In the melee, one of the attackers twisted his ankle and fell to the ground. A Falun Gong practitioner tried to help his injured foe, lifting him up and carrying him on his back while the villain continued raining punches on him. In the piece’s climax, the communist lifted his fist for the final blow. He let it hover in the air, trembling, and then – in a moment of tension that reminded me, more than anything, of the moment when Keanu Reeves cannot bring himself to kill Patrick Swayze in the third act of Point Break – slowly dropped it, too moved by the young man’s compassion to continue.

The young Falun Gong practitioners gave him their book. The reformed thug pirouetted around the stage. Everyone sat and meditated together, and suddenly the backdrop exploded into a kaleidoscope of colourful animations – monks descending from heaven, women in dresses swirling around, enacting a kind of orgy of celestial joy, presumably meant to mirror the inner ecstasy of spiritual enlightenment. Suddenly, the former communist’s leg was healed. He ran, he leapt, and then the cast pointed to the screen, and to the final image of a man, meditating and beatific, at peace with the universe.