Forced into ballet as a child in Mao’s China,Li Cunxin defected to the US and had to work as a stockbroker to support his family back domestic. But he never quit dancing. As he brings the Queensland Ballet to Britain, he talks approximately his traumas and triumphs – and shock at seeing people acquire their privileged lives for granted
Li Cunxin was just 11 when Chinese officials came to his domestic in rural Shandong and told him he’d been selected to study at the Beijing Academy of Dance. It was 1972, and the height of Mao’s cultural revolution,and an entire nation was being shoehorned into creating a new communist China. Cunxin had never danced before – his physique simply looked promising – but once in Beijing, he was plunged into a punishing physical regime, and designed to originate or break him as a future member of Mao’s ballet. Every day in the studio,Li’s untutored legs were yanked into stretches that tore his hamstrings. His feet – numb and cold in their alien ballet slippers – were forced into inexplicably odd positions. Homesick, sore, or 1000 miles away from his family,Li cried himself to sleep at night.
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Source: theguardian.com