Plucked from his humble village with the beaming support of his parents, Li, who's played by three actors as he grows up, endures the rigors of training under party hacks and a kindly old teacher who loves the Bolshoi. Mao's Last Dancer describes the inevitable-for-its-genre journey from communist rags to capitalist riches.
And any way you cut it, life was no picnic under Mao, particularly in far-flung villages like the one Li lived in during the 1970s, where great leaps of any kind were discouraged unless mandated by the state. That's an accurate, if reductive, view of the defection of Chinese dancer Li Cunxin to the Houston Ballet in 1981 Li lived to tell the tale in an autobiography that sold very well in Australia, where he now lives. This compelling memoir includes photos documenting Li's extraordinary life.Most Western-made biopics framed by flight from totalitarian countries to the United States - of which the enjoyably sentimental Mao's Last Dancer is one - come across as hymns to American freedom emphatically underlined by brutal dictatorship in the mother state. This inspiring story of passion, resilience, and a family's love captures the harsh reality of life in Mao's communist China and the exciting world of professional dance. Ultimately, he defected to the west in a dramatic media storm, and went on to dance with the Houston Ballet for sixteen years. was nothing like his communist indoctrination had led him to believe. From one hardship to another, Cunxin demonstrated perseverance and an appetite for success that led him to be chosen as one of the first two people to leave Mao's China and go to American to dance on a special cultural exchange. Having known bitter poverty in his rural China home, ballet would be his family's best chance for a better future. At the age of eleven, Li Cunxin was one of the privileged few selected to serve in Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution by studying at the Beijing Dance Academy.
The young reader edition of the international bestseller now a major motion picture.
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