Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin [53]
The essence of this fable left its mark on me. Nothing comes easily. There are no shortcuts. Things only come when one works for them.
After our midyear exams, we started our pas de deux classes. I liked this class—it was our only chance to get near the girls. At first, the girls and the boys were on different sides of the studio. Then we were paired by our teacher according to size and strength. (I secretly wished to be paired with the girls I liked best.) As soon as the music ended we would go back to opposite sides of the studio.
In the second half of that year, some previously banned Russian ballet films were shown to us. We weren’t supposed to learn anything technical or artistic from them: we were just supposed to criticize the story. Giselle, for example, was clearly a story from a capitalist society. We criticized the pathetic peasant girl Giselle who did nothing but desire the lifestyle of the wealthy and pursue material values. We laughed at her love for the deceitful Prince Albrecht. How stupid she was to turn her back on the peasant who truly loved her. “You can tell this ballet was designed by a capitalist,” our political head said. “What a contrast to our model ballets!”
We were all Mao’s faithful children, and we all agreed with our political head, but I couldn’t help admiring Prince Albrecht’s brilliant dancing. The dancer was Vladimir Vasiliev from the Bolshoi and his performance left me gasping. Once I’d seen the beautiful Giselle I began to doubt The Red Detachment of Women was quite so artistically brilliant.
It was during our busy end-of-year exam preparation time, in January 1976, that Zhou Enlai, the Premier of China, died. Several long remembrance sessions were organized to commemorate Zhou’s great contributions to China. I was surprised to see so many of my teachers sobbing.
Right after Zhou’s death, Deng Xiaoping was arrested. Mao appointed Hua Guofeng to succeed Zhou Enlai but it soon became clear that Hua Guofeng was an ineffective leader, a puppet of Mao and the Gang of Four. The Gang of Four organized a “Denounce Deng Xiaoping” campaign. He was labeled an old rightist whose motive was to corrupt the communist system and eventually overthrow it. Many people only halfheartedly participated in the “denounce Deng Xiaoping” campaign. I could sense a huge tide of resentment developing against the Gang of Four.
Around this time we started to rehearse another model ballet, and this time I was chosen to be the main character. The Children of the Meadow was about the new generation of children under Mao and their devotion to his cause. We rehearsed one act of this ballet for several months and then performed it in our academy theater. I received encouraging comments about my performance.
To begin with I had no stage fear at all. But this changed quickly when, a week later, we went to an industrial city near Beijing to perform for the public. During the opening night performance my brain went completely blank. I didn’t know what I was doing onstage. I had forgotten the steps. That was my first stage fright, at age fourteen. I would never forget it.
After that performance the head of our ballet department, Zhang Shu, spearheaded a project we began in 1976. We were to create a full-length ballet. The story was about a teenage brother and sister whose parents were captured by Chiang Kaishek’s Guomindang army and hanged on a symbolic tree called Hai Luo Sha.
I was utterly surprised to be chosen as first cast for the lead role. Suddenly I was the envy of the entire academy. The pressure was immense but the opportunity for me to dance in a new creation was beyond my wildest dreams.
The choreography took over six months. We rehearsed every afternoon. I changed three to four soaking wet T-shirts