Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin [31]
That first morning after breakfast we went to try on our white vests, dark blue shorts, and bright blue cotton tracksuits. The dark blue shorts had elastic on the waist and around each leg. They felt strange. Then we were introduced to Chiu Ho, the head ballet mistress, who took us to the shoe workshop for our ballet-shoe fittings.
In the shoe workshop, Chiu Ho told us to choose the tightest ballet shoes possible, because they would eventually stretch. We were then greeted by a short hunchbacked man who was supposed to be the best maker of ballet shoes in China. His workshop had racks and racks of ballet shoes, including pointe shoes. There were stacks of leather and cotton fabrics and buckets full of shoe glue. A few sewing machines sat on workbenches against the walls. Then my eyes fixed on the rows of pointe shoes. I immediately feared the time when I would have to squeeze my feet into these tiny, tiny shoes.
“Boys first!” Chiu Ho barked. One by one we tried on the ballet shoes. They were so small they cramped my long toes. I couldn’t imagine how uncomfortable the hard, tiny pointe shoes would be.
“Okay, boys are done! You can all get out of here!” Chiu Ho bellowed.
“What about the pointe shoes?” I asked.
“What about them?” She frowned.
“Don’t we have to try them on?” I asked.
She and the shoemaker roared with laughter. “Only girls wear pointe shoes!” Chiu Ho chuckled.
I felt like collapsing with relief! I didn’t realize that even the small flat shoes Chiu Ho had given me to wear would be enough to cause permanent damage to my toes.
We spent the rest of that day preparing for the official start of our training. The Beijing Dance Academy, we were told, was regarded as the most prestigious dance school in the whole of China. Madame Mao’s military officers headed key departments of the university. These were the “political heads” we had already encountered, and we soon learned to be terrified of them too. Even our teachers seemed to show them an unusual amount of respect. They had absolute power and would become our political and ideological mentors.
We checked our timetable. Classes would begin the following morning. Our first class was ballet, followed by Beijing Opera Movement and Chinese folk dance. We would do ballet every morning; other classes alternated on different days. Lunch was at noon. Between 12:30 and 2 p.m. we would have our midday nap, a Chinese tradition, and from 2 to 5:30 we’d study normal school subjects such as mathematics, Chinese, history, geography, and politics. Five thirty was dinner time, and for two hours after that we were expected either to study politics or practice ballet.
My first ever ballet class was at eight o’clock the next morning. It was taught by Teacher Chen Lueng, the tall man from Beijing who’d auditioned us at my school in Qingdao.
The studio we were taken to seemed huge and empty with only ten boys and a pianist in it. It was snowing outside and the windows were frosty. There were some heaters along the walls, but they were very inefficient. We wore our little shorts and vests and shivered with cold.
Chen Lueng gathered us in a semicircle. “Can anyone tell me what ballet is?”
We just looked at each other.
He smiled gently. “Ballet is an art form that originated from dancing in the French imperial courts. It is a universal art form today.” He told us that our syllabus would be based on the famous Vaganova method from Russia, which had produced some of the world’s finest dancers, including Rudolf Nureyev and Vladimir Vasiliev.
Everything he said went in one ear and straight out the other. Those names didn’t mean anything to me.
“The first two years are considered crucial. I’ll be your teacher for this period. To start with, I’ll teach you some basic positions and exercises. Over