Dance Dance Revolution

Personal meets political in Mao's Last Dancer, the story of Li Cuxin, an unlikely star of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

A trite but oft-repeated paradox is that great oppression, in fostering personal resistance and determination, produces great art. However, once artistic freedom ceases to be a human rights issue, the quality of art plummets. Comparing the novels of Pasternak or the poetry of Akhmatova to what has been produced in post-communist Russia makes the point. Nonetheless, the tag line of Bruce Beresford’s new film Mao’s Last Dancer, “Before you can fly you have to be free,” powerfully suggests that only freedom guarantees that art can truly flourish. Perhaps the best incubator is an experience of oppression followed by freedom – in this respect the latter is more fully appreciated. After all, artists have often thrived in exile, their searing memories and formative experiences a driving force for ambition and success.

This is exactly the experience of Li Cunxin, well known in dance circles as “the Chinese Baryshnikov.” Based on his autobiography, the film tells the story of how state officials plucked a young village boy from obscurity and, through a process of physical, artistic, and ideological training, produced a superstar. Luckily for Cunxin (played by three actors, but as an adult by Birmingham Principal Dancer Chi Cao), his coming of age coincided with China’s first cautious openings to the West. Thus, following his “discovery” by Houston Ballet choreographer Ben Stevenson (played by Canadian actor Bruce Greenwood), Cunxin was permitted to travel to Houston as an exchange student. His first experiences of America – from skyscrapers to shopping malls – are both funny and poignant. Cunxin’s decision to defect at the end of his stay made international headlines – a historical reminder of how the Cold War was fought on both cultural and military fronts.

Australian “new wave” director Beresford is an actor’s director, well known for making films that tell individual stories of minor or major importance set against a larger backdrop of conflict or social change that deeply condition strategies and choices, for better or worse. Breaker Morant concerns the court martial of three Australian army officers at the end of the Boer War. Driving Miss Daisy tells the story of an elderly Jewish woman and her long-time African-American chauffeur at the dawn of the civil rights movement. Canadian co-produced film Black Robe dramatically illustrates the different worlds occupied by a 17th century Jesuit priest in Quebec and his aboriginal interlocutors.

Mao’s Last Dancer is very much in keeping with this tradition. Aside from the beautifully filmed dance scenes from many of classical ballet’s “greatest hits” – from “Giselle,” “Don Quixote,” and “Swan Lake,” with a dollop of “revolutionary” ballet thrown in for contrast – this film will be most appreciated for Beresford’s trademark mixture of the personal and the political, the individual narrative caught up in the larger sweep of history. Even though much of the story is compressed and overly dramatized and sentimental for filmic purposes, it’s sure to be a crowd pleaser.