Radio City Music Hall is hosting shows by a Chinese dissident group and the country’s communist government this weekend. On Friday and Saturday there will be a Falun Gong-linked Chinese New Year’s Celebration; on Monday the Chinese government will stage its own concert, with a song the spiritual group’s members say China uses when it tortures its members.

Yesterday on one side of Sixth Avenue, smiling women dressed in satin gowns and with braids wound high on their heads, entreated passersby to attend a “wonderful show” about Chinese culture. Across the street, the fake blood dripping down a woman’s face stopped businessmen in their tracks. Her hands hung over a poll, while another man, dressed in a communist uniform pretended to hit her with a club; another woman lay down, feigning death.

The people involved in the displays on both sides of the avenue were practitioners of Falun Gong, the spiritual practice of meditation and calisthenics the Chinese government has banned from its soil, calling it an “evil cult.” The smiling promoters were advertising a Falun Gong-linked show, while the protesters railed against the Chinese government’s planned celebration that will follow on Monday.

For the fourth year in a row, New Tang Dynasty Television, a New York based satellite broadcaster with links to Falun Gong, is hosting a “Chinese New Year Global Gala.” Last year the concert sold out Madison Square Garden, the organizers said. This year, it has expanded to three performances Friday and Saturday at the 5,500-seat Radio City Music Hall, in addition to 15 other performances on four continents and live broadcasts of the performances on television and the Internet.

To promote the show, volunteers – most of them Falun Gong practitioners – have poured into New York from around the country and from as far away as Taiwan or Europe. Few say Falun Gong is the reason. Instead, volunteers say they are drawn to the show’s message of cultivating ancient Chinese culture and linking the East and West.

Richard Yin, 36, used up all of his vacation time as a marketing manager in Chicago to stand out in the cold and encourage people to attend the Chinese New Year’s show. The reason, he said, is that his “mission” is to let people know what real Chinese culture is, and not what the communist government portrays it as.

While he said 80% of the volunteers were practitioners of Falun Gong, he said they did not mention it in the advertising for the show because the show was not about the religion. “We believe Falun Gong is part of this divine culture, this ancient Chinese culture,” he said.

Mr.Yin, however, and the protesters playing out the torture scenes across the street, feared the Chinese government was upstaging the show. On Monday, Chinese Television, a government-run station, is putting on it’s own show at Radio City Music Hall: Same Song USA 2006 East West Cultural Exchange.

Practitioners of Falun Gong allege the Chinese government is retaliating with the Same Song concert, a song that members say is used in the torture of Falun Gong prisoners in China. The Chinese government, says Falun Gong brainwashes its members. It banned the practice in 1999, and has denied torture charges in news reports. The Chinese consulate in New York could not be reached for comment on the show.

One woman among the half dozen eagerly pushing the show in front of Radio City Music Hall, Weixun Li, rushed over at the mention of Falun Gong. In September, she said, she was released after years of torture. “We have to alert the people in America,” Ms. Li, 48, said. “It’s a free world. We have to alert them, it doesn’t have to happen here.” Still, all she was telling passersby is that the show would be “so beautiful” on Friday and Saturday.