Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin [59]
“How was your holiday?” I whispered.
“Fine, how was yours?”
“Good. I brought you some sorghum candy.”
“Thank you. I brought you some Shanghai cakes.”
We edged closer to each other. Suddenly we heard the door of Zhang Shu’s office open and we froze.
To our great relief his footsteps went in the opposite direction. We nervously exchanged our gifts and quickly tiptoed out of the studio.
When I finally sat on the edge of my bed in the dark with Her Junfang’s gift in my hands, I hated myself for being such a coward, for not holding her when I had the chance. I couldn’t believe that I had forgotten all the passionate words I had rehearsed in my mind before our meeting. We never had the opportunity to get close to each other again.
Other than the Sundays I spent with the Chongs, I used almost every spare moment to practice. I learned more in that one year than in the previous six years combined.
Around the time we were preparing for our graduation the London Festival Ballet performed in China, one of the first professional companies allowed to enter the country under Deng Xiaoping’s “open-door policy.” They came to perform with us at our academy theater and everyone talked about the “big-nosed people,” the foreigners.
I had such problems trying to distinguish one big-nosed person from another. They all looked alike, whether they were in the movies, in dance videotapes, or there in person. I had to remember what clothes they wore to differentiate them. If they suddenly changed costume between scenes I would be totally lost. And they seemed to speak so fast, without any commas or stops. One of the foreigners who came was an eighteen-year-old dancer named Mary McKendry; she watched me dance.
The Festival Ballet performed Giselle, and two mixed programs, including Harald Lander’s famed Etude. I wished I could watch this kind of dancing every day: the big-nosed dancers’ artistic interpretations and discipline quickly gained our respect. I longed to learn more about Western culture, to work with these great choreographers.
Our graduation exam preparations went on for over three months. Our final average grades would determine which dance company we’d get into. The Central Ballet of China would select only the top graduates. Others would be sent to cities far away or to provincial troupes.
A month before our final exam Teacher Xiao came to me and said, “Some teachers think I have allowed you to do too many solos in your exam. Most students will do one or two, one student is doing three. I think six might be too much for you.”
“No, I want to do all six!”
“Are you sure? Because once I hand my submission to Zhang Shu it will be very hard to change.”
“I’m sure I can do it,” I replied confidently.
He thought for a moment. “All right, but just remember, try to find the secret of doing every step as easily and effortlessly as possible. That is what dancing is all about.”
The first solo was from Madame Mao’s model ballet The White-haired Girl. I was to dance with an imaginary grenade in my hand, ducking enemy bullets with fast, crisp movements. But my real passion and love was for the Western classical solos. In those, however, I had real problems with a double tour en l’air. To achieve good height as well as complete the two turns down to kneeling position in the flash of an eye was an enormous challenge. My right knee was grazed and bleeding from constant landings. Images of Baryshnikov, Nureyev, and Vasiliev continually inspired me. When I finally got it right the feeling was sensational.
In the end I did perform all six of my solos. I enjoyed every step I danced. After seven years at the academy I had even mastered eight consecutive pirouettes, occasionally ten. And now here I was, one among the last generation of Mao’s dancers about to graduate.
For our graduation performance our academy wanted to revive Swan Lake for the first time since the Cultural Revolution. It was a difficult task—all the records of Western ballets, including