Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin [66]
Louisa dropped us back at the studio, which was packed with dancers when we arrived. On the center barre the students moved up to make room for Zhang and me. Then Ben walked in. His energy and his passion for teaching seemed to inspire everybody. During the class I kept a keen eye on other students and to my surprise I discovered Zhang and I compared well. The precision of our technique was high; this could only have come about from the strict discipline of our Chinese training.
There were students here from England, Canada, and other places, a result of Ben’s international reputation as a teacher, choreographer, and artistic director. Our schedule was full each day. There were many classes—ballet, character, modern ballet, pas de deux, body conditioning, and choreographic workshops. I wasn’t sure what to expect in the modern ballet class, but our Chinese folk dance classes and tai chi movements made it easy for us to find some common ground. The body conditioning class was different—it was based on something called Pilates, and I could see it would help me understand my own body and deal with my weaknesses and injuries.
In Houston we were even given fifty dollars per week as a living allowance. I never dreamed of having that amount of money in my entire life! Eight months of my dia’s wages! I tried to save as much money as possible so I could help my family when I returned to China.
We soon discovered that Ben was a very good cook and loved entertaining, so we were surrounded by people all the time we were there. That meant a lot of nodding and smiling on our part.
During that second week in Houston, Ben’s good friend Barbara Bush invited us to her house for lunch. I remember she even had an indoor pool. She apologized for her husband’s absence: he had to attend a presidential rally in California that day.
I felt very privileged to meet Barbara, but her husband was such a high-profile politician that I was deeply suspicious of her hidden political agenda. Would she try to corrupt our political beliefs? But all we received was generosity and friendliness. Barbara reminded me of my niang. She talked about China very fondly.
That day we’d been asked to bring our swimming suits. We didn’t have any, so Ben had to buy them for us, like so many other things. Barbara and Ben chatted happily while Zhang and I swam in a pool owned by one of the most powerful ladies in America.
Barbara had a little dog called Fred. She adored Fred. She’d even taken him to China while Mr. Bush served as the first envoy. She told us that Fred was very intelligent. I thought that if her dog had been in my hometown, someone would have eaten him for dinner.
We went to board member Louisa Sarofim’s house a few times too. I couldn’t believe her wealth. I saw some of the most beautiful paintings I had ever seen. Ben told me later that they were worth millions of dollars. A million dollars? She had so much money, yet she was so nice and unpretentious and she loved ballet and took immense pride in the Houston Ballet. The amount of wealth surrounding ballet in America seemed amazing. Sometimes I heard people talking of hundreds of millions of dollars. Such numbers didn’t exist in my vocabulary. The financial and cultural gaps were simply too great to comprehend.
During the first week of the summer school, Ben arranged for us to attend an English language course and I began to learn ten to fifteen new words a day. I carried a piece of paper everywhere I went, with my new English words written on it. The most effective place for me to learn them was in the bathroom. My English improved quickly, and I went on translating for Zhang.
I was constantly surprised by how much freedom the American people had. One day in the academy one of the students from New Orleans noticed my Mao button on my dance bag.
“Do you like your Chairman Mao?” he asked.
“I love Chairman Mao!” I replied with my fist over my heart.
“Well, I don’t like our president Jimmy Carter. I don’t think he’s a good president at all,” he