Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Li Cunxin was born into an extremely poor peasant
family in Qingdoa, a remote commune village in Northern China in 1961.
The sixth son in a family of seven sons, he lived in a small
house with twenty of his relatives. The family struggled to stay alive, subsisting
at near starvation levels on a daily basis.
In 1972 Madame Mao, wife o f Chairman Mao, decided to revive the Peking Dance
Academy and sent men into the countryside to find suitable children to
attend. At age eleven, Li, with no former experience, was chosen to become
a dancer on the basis of his physique.
After seven years of hard, sometimes cruel training at the Beijing Dance
Academy, he received one of two artistic scholarships to study in America. The
first cultural delegation to China introduced Li to the artistic director of the
Houston Ballet Academy, who would become his mentor for the next sixteen years.
Li fell in love and married an American girl in 1981 which resulted in him
being held against his will for twenty-one hours by the Chinese Consulate in
Houston. It became a huge international incident during which the FBI surrounded
the Consulate and sealed the airport. The American government, led by George
Bush, Sr., managed to negotiate with the Chinese government to eventually secure
his release. Li went on to win two prestigious silver medals at two
separate International Ballet competitions for America. In addition, he was the
principal dancer with the Houston Ballet and the Australian Ballet for over 20
years and was considered to be one of the best dancers in the world.
Li's book, Mao's Last Dancer, took two and half years to write and has
become a huge bestseller in Australia (reaching number one in non-fiction) and
is currently on its fourteenth print-run since September, 2003. After making a
career transition, Li is a senior manager at a large stockbroking firm. He
and Mary, his life partner, have three children and reside in Australia.
A former principal dancer at both the Houston Ballet and the English National
Ballet, Mary sacrificed her career at the height of her profession to teach
their first child Sophie to speak. Diagnosed with profound deafness at 18
months, Sophie is now a bright young girl with cochlear implants. Recently,
Sophie, won a scholarship to study at one of the most prestigious schools in
America. Mary is now a principal teacher and coach at the Australian Ballet.
Li Cunxin's website
This bio was last updated on 11/28/2016. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.
This interview was conducted by Jane Simpson on 18th November 2003 and first
published at ballet.co.uk. It is reproduced with the permission of Jane Simpson and ballet.co.uk.
From the real-life Nureyev to the fictional Billy Elliott, these days we're all
familiar with the legend of the boy who falls in love with ballet and fights his
way through to become a dancer. Well, Li Cunxin's story isn't at all like that:
in fact it's quite the opposite. This is the tale of a boy sitting quietly in
his primary school in a remote area of China, knowing almost nothing and caring
less about ballet, when a couple of visitors walk in, pick out one of the girls
and say 'You: you're going to be a dancer'. And just as they're leaving, the
teacher points at Li and says 'Why don't you try him as well?' - and Li begins a
journey which takes him via years of hard work, defection to the West, and
stardom in America to the present day, when he lives in Melbourne, an Australian
citizen and a successful stockbroker, with an Australian wife and three children
and an autobiography which has been in the bestseller lists for the last ten
weeks.
The sixth of seven sons, Li was born into poverty: ...
Jung Chang was born in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China, in 1952. She was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen and then worked as a peasant, a "barefoot doctor," a steelworker, and an electrician before becoming an ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Mao's Last Dancer
Try:
Mao
by Jung Chang
Jon Halliday is a former Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King's College, University of London. With his wife, Jung Chang, he wrote Mao: The Unknown Story. He has written or edited eight previous books. (more)
If you enjoyed:
Mao's Last Dancer
Try:
Mao
by Jon Halliday
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