Mao's Last Dancer

More than just moves
By Rebecca J. Ritzel
Friday, August 20, 2010

About 30 minutes into "Mao's Last Dancer," there's a crucial handoff in a Beijing park worthy of a clandestine thriller. An older teacher, suspected of anti-Communist sympathies, slips his student a wooden box and instructs him to conceal it within his coat. The next day, the teacher is hauled away in handcuffs, and his students gather under the cloak of darkness to see what's inside.

It's a videocassette, and once the contraband film plays, the students are awed by a black-and-white clip of Mikhail Baryshnikov, flying freely across a stage. These adolescents aren't out to overthrow the government; they just want to dance like the most famous Communist defector in the world.

"Mao's Last Dancer" is an unusual hybrid, part ballerina chick-flick and part post-Communist drama. It's also a true story. In the early 1980s, a landmark cultural exchange allowed Chinese dancer Li Cunxin (the student who was handed the contraband film) to spend a year at the Houston Ballet. He fell in love with an 18-year-old student and secretly married her two nights before his scheduled departure. After a diplomatic drama that reached all the way to the White House, Li was freed but in exile. He went on to dance with Houston Ballet for 16 years, later immigrating to Australia. After his autobiography was released in 2004, Li's story attracted Australia's top film talents: director Bruce Beresford ("Driving Miss Daisy") and screenwriter Jan Sardi ("Shine").

They took great care with the casting. Amanda Schull, the former San Francisco Ballet dancer who starred in "Center Stage," is back on the big screen. This time, she's surrounded by dancers who can actually act. Beresford calls Birmingham Royal Ballet standout Chi Cao, making his debut as Li, a young Asian Errol Flynn. That's a stretch, but he's convincing as a Chinese dancer raised in poverty and overwhelmed by the excesses of Reagan-era Texas. A wry Bruce Greenwood ("Dinner for Schmucks") plays the choreographer who brings Lito the States, while Kyle MacLachlan ("Sex in the City") is the immigration attorney who keeps him here.

Many films have portrayed the rigors of ballet training, but none will make viewers wince quite like "Mao's Last Dancer." Neve Campbell's blistered feet in "The Company" can't compete with a 11-year-old boy crying in a decrepit dormitory. Party officials carted him off from a peasant village to attend Beijing Dance Academy. Failing to fully extend his legs in a split jump, instructors call him a clumsy pig. This backstory unfolds via flashback. The middle, come-to-America section of the movie is the most engaging, with its vivid ballet sequences, sweet infatuation and sharp dialogue. By comparison, the final, post-defection third of the film feels like a denouement that overstayed its visa.

Yet balletomanes will love the climatic "Rite of Spring" sequence. Watch for scenes where Sydney's Theatre Royal stands in for the Kennedy Center. Reviewing Li's 1986 performance of "Swan Lake," Washington Post dance critic Alan Kriegsman called him an "exemplary" prince and the company's "chief adornment." Chi is the chief adornment of "Mao's Last Dancer," and the film is also exemplary, if for no other reason than to demonstrate that the drama of dance yields serious cinematic stories.

Contains no objectionable content.