Mao's Last Dancer

Dance Magazine, Sept, 2004 by Molly Glentzer

Mao's Last Dancer By Li Cunxin. New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons. 2004. 451 pages, illustrations, $25.95

It isn't news to dancers that Li Cunxin, who performed sixteen years with Houston Ballet and four with the Australian Ballet before retiring in 1999, knows the agony of hard work and rigorous discipline. But Li's poignant memoir, Mao's Last Dancer, surprises in other ways. If you want to know why China produces such wonderful dancers these days, this is a good place to start.

The book traces Li's transformation from a naive "feather in a whirlwind" to life as a fully indoctrinated young Red Guardsman, then political defector, and finally, a passionate artist. Li was a bravura technician who pushed himself relentlessly (he wore sandbags to build up his legs). While he could eat up a role like the predatory main character in The Miraculous Mandarin (which Ben Stevenson staged for him), more often he projected a warm, innocent ardor as Prince Siegfried or Romeo.

Born in a rural Chinese commune during Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, Li was the sixth of seven sons in a house sustained by love but little else. At 11, he was given an "iron rice bowl"--a scholarship to the militaristic Beijing Dance Academy that indentured him to the communist government.

His own iron will and appetite for opportunity, though, propelled him further. "I was the one who had to fulfill my niang's, my dia's [parents'], and my six brothers' dreams," he writes.

Through one hardship after another, Li's gentle humor keeps the book buoyant. With compelling simplicity, he also weaves ancient fables he learned as a child into his tale: life lessons about frogs who yearn for a broader perspective, crickets who save their families, and bow hunters who learn to keep promises. They make an engaging framework and offer evidence of China's strong cultural foundations.

In spite of home's pull, the teenaged Li was "an ant in a hot wok." His 1981 defection--after a stint as an exchange student in Houston--makes a gripping chapter. Here, especially, Li's heart aches as much as his muscle--especially for the mother and father he thought lie might never see again.

Mao's Last Dancer is uneven in places, but Li's tenacity is an inspiring lesson to any reader, dancer or not. It's the stuff of which great movies are made. Expect this one soon, and bring Kleenex. But read the book first.--MOLLY GLENTZER