Li Cunxin, the
new artistic director of the Queensland Ballet, with dancers Rachael Walsh and
Hao Bin at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre in Brisbane.
Picture above:
Lyndon Mechielsen
More amazing talent! A truly
inspirational piece from book and film!
This time from the world of Ballet.
I watched “Mao’s Last Dancer” and really enjoyed it.
It is based on the auto-biographical book of the same name.
I highly recommend it.
Any freedom-loving person should see it as we sometimes take our freedom for granted.
The actor/dancer Chi Cao who portrayed Li Cunxin was brilliant! From what I have found out he performed his dances in the film.
This time from the world of Ballet.
I watched “Mao’s Last Dancer” and really enjoyed it.
It is based on the auto-biographical book of the same name.
I highly recommend it.
Any freedom-loving person should see it as we sometimes take our freedom for granted.
The actor/dancer Chi Cao who portrayed Li Cunxin was brilliant! From what I have found out he performed his dances in the film.
LI Cunxin has leapt across the world's ballet stages, but in the beginning dancing didn't come easily.
"My muscle strength was very weak when I was younger," Li said yesterday. "I couldn't jump."
When Li joined Madame Mao's Beijing Dance Academy in China he decided to improve his strength by hopping up and down the stairs with bags of sand tied to his ankles.
By the time he graduated in 1979, he says, he was probably the most technically brilliant dancer in his year.
Now the 51-year-old author of Mao's Last Dancer is applying his grit and determination to a fresh vision for Queensland Ballet, of which he is the new artistic director.
"I would like Queensland Ballet to become one of the most dynamic, vibrant and high-standard ballet companies in the world," Li said. "I think it's going to be a very hard road . . . To attain that standard it will really require several years' work at least."
He has deliberately programmed classical ballets such as Cinderella and Giselle because they are difficult.Li hopes his debut season, announced today, will play a part in that vision by helping to improve the technique of his dancers.
"I think classical ballet is always the most challenging technically and artistically," he said. "The dancers are going to grow, mature and be very challenged by these ballets."
Among the challenges he has set himself is to raise the company's profile in its home state.
"I'd like Queenslanders to really wake up to the fact that (QB) has some fabulous dancers and I think they should be appreciated accordingly," he said. "A certain kind of inferiority syndrome exists in Queensland about their local performing arts companies and I really hope that will change."
Li is likely to make some changes to the core company line-up, although the changes "won't be dramatic".
In the future he wants to increase the number of dancers in the company, using his reputation to lure some of the best dancers in the world.
Queensland Ballet's season next year will include a mixed contemporary and classical program called Elegance and an in-studio program called Dance Dialogues. Li has chosen a version of Cinderella by choreographer Ben Stevenson, who invited him to the US after he graduated from the Beijing Dance Academy.
Li remembers watching rehearsals of Cinderella at the Houston Ballet when he was a student at the academy in 1980.
"It's one of the first ballets that really moved me when I went to the West," he said. "I had tears streaming down my (face) in the studio."
by Bridget Cormack
With many thanks to The Australian
Update: October
2013: Ballet company finds itself on sound footing
Artistic director Li Cunxin, front, with Queensland Ballet principal dancers, from left, Matthew Lawrence, Clare Morehen, Hao Bin and Meng Ningning. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen
TWO years ago Queensland Ballet was in a
dire predicament. It had posted a sizeable deficit, due in no small part to
cancelled performances following the devastating Queensland floods, and
audiences were not growing.
Fast forward to now, and artistic director
Li Cunxin has dramatically turned around the company's fortunes. Last night Li
confirmed the company's income for this calendar year had increased by $2
million to a record $8m.
He also announced the most ambitious
season - featuring guest stars Carlos Acosta, Steven McRae and Tamara Rojo - in
the company's 53-year history.
Li, in his first year as director, said
the company's income growth came from philanthropy, sponsorship and ticket
sales.
Months before the Christmas ballet The
Nutcracker has even opened, season 2013 is completely sold out, "So it's a
phenomenal leap in a pretty tough environment," Li said
yesterday.
"I feel the whole organisation has really
stepped up. Financially and artistically we're ahead of my expectations." The
former Bell Potter stockbroker who wrote the international bestseller Mao's Last
Dancer, about his childhood and youth as a dancer in Mao's China, has presided
over significant change in his almost two years running the
company.
Multi-year sponsorship deals have been
signed with with QGC, Virgin Australia, JCDecaux and BMW. Subscriber numbers
have tripled, albeit with more flexible subscription options.
Next year Queensland Ballet will be the
first company to tap Premier Campbell Newman's Super Star Fund. The $3m over
four years is available to Queensland companies to import international stars to
headline productions.
Next June, Acosta, McRae and Rojo will
appear in Kenneth MacMillian's renowned production of Romeo and Juliet, being
performed in Australia for the first time.
They will perform opposite Queensland
Ballet principals, plus Australian Ballet principal Daniel Gaudiello and former
principal Steven Heathcote.
Li expects the season at the Lyric Theatre
will generate tourism and initiate a broader reinvention of the
company.
"This will be the crown jewel of our
season," he said.
The 2014 season will also feature a new
production of Coppelia, choreographed by Greg Horsman and set in Hahndorf, South
Australia, co-produced with West Australian Ballet.
The Flourish program will include pieces
by George Balanchine, Nils Christe, Ben Stevenson and Nicolo Fonte. The
Nutcracker will return at Christmas every year.
Li said in 2015 or 2016 he hopes
Queensland Ballet will be ready to take a classic and a contemporary work to
Europe to face the toughest critics.
By Michaela Boland
With many thanks to The
Australian ( Pay Wall)
Another update:
Li Cunxin shows the power of one with Queensland Ballet
By Sharon Verghis
IN an airy, converted 19th-century shoe factory in Brisbane, Li Cunxin is moving two stately Queensland Ballet principal dancers, Chinese husband and wife team Hao Bin and Meng Ningning, like giant chess pieces across the polished floor.
It’s a tough business. It was originally made for television in Canada in 1963 and immortalised by some of ballet’s most powerful pairings — Nureyev and Fonteyn, Kirkland and Dowell, Ferri and Eagling, Osipova and Carlos Acosta — since the ballet’s explosive debut at the Royal Opera House in 1965, it requires abandoning pretty poses, spotlit entrances and general artifice. One of ballet’s greatest choreographers, MacMillan, who once said he was sick of fairytales and not afraid of “ugly” choreography, has proved challenging for generations of dancers, former Australian Ballet principal and now QB leading man Matthew Lawrence notes, precisely because he was not afraid of human flaws.
This morning, raw abandonment is proving a hard vibe to emulate for these refined, Beijing-trained classicists. “Don’t be so, uh, ballerina, Ningning,” Li implores the delicate dancer, catapulting her so quickly forward with a hand on the bony wing of her shoulderblade (“Run, run faster, fly!”) that she slides like a whizzing hockey puck under the piano after almost colliding full-tilt into it. Sweaty and puffed, the pair confer quietly in Mandarin as they strive to meet the choreographic demands, from that sinuous weaving of bodies to the intimate backbends, the alarmingly acrobatic lifts (“Can you get one leg at 12 and the other at 3?”), and perhaps most difficult, the dramatic, emotional gestures required for a ballet made for strong dancer-actors, not danseurs nobles (“Too small, too posed,” he cries at a delicate pile, a robotically happy expression from Ningning).
Over an intense hour, Li forensically finds, and plugs, every hole, finesses every nuance (“Don’t look down, you’ll lose the audience”) demonstrates facial expressions — eyes wide, startled, scared, joyous. From time to time he breaks the intensity with dry jokes: watching as the young couple shyly, stiffly rehearse a kiss, he rolls his eyes: “If I told people you were married, they will be surprised.” (He grins, adding sotto voce: “Ah never mind, perhaps they kiss at home tonight.”) At one point he spreads his arms wide, a storyteller in flight. “This pas de deux should be full of layers of emotion so bring different feelings to it. The steps are nothing. It’s the story, the meaning behind the steps.”
All through the ballet’s historic Thomas Dixon building on Brisbane’s West End, not far from the hungry pelicans, trendy cafes, joggers, tourists and ferries that define the narrow southern strip lining the river that cuts through a culturally rejuvenated Brisbane, there is a sense of a vast hive humming as a big ballet is built, brick by brick. The corridors are lined with parts of the set that arrived from the Birmingham Ballet 10 days ago; wardrobe mistress Noeline Hill sorts through nine cane skips of props — birdcages, baskets of fake fruit, mandolins, 22 racks of beautifully beaded, hand-dyed and braided costumes for various princes, harlots, courtiers, beggars and pageboys (guest artist Carlos Acosta’s Romeo outfit hangs separately in a plastic bag as befitting a superstar).
In the main studio up to 60 dancers rehearse the chaotic opening Verona marketplace scene under the watchful eye of the MacMillan Trust’s Julie Wood (“Kenneth told his wife, Lady MacMillan, that if she ever had any doubts about the staging, to ask Julie,” a watching Li whispers). A short, droll, salty-tongued figure in black, Wood supervises a fight scene with the male principals, who last week had a swordfighting lesson from visiting British fight director Gary Harris from the trust. They seem a little cavalier with their flashing weapons. “Hey Tybalt,” she calls out. “Be more careful with that sword. Don’t garrotte him, you’ll have his head rolling down the aisles in a minute.” She sighs comically. “OK, let’s go from the top and see just how big a mess this is.”
Later this month, Queensland Ballet will launch the Australian premiere of MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet — a national coup. There is a buzz and sense of nervy mission in this small regional company, Australia’s oldest professional company, as it takes on what QB chief executive Anna Marsden describes as a work “that will be the turning point for the company in its 53-year history, success or failure”.
Featuring three of international ballet’s biggest stars in the lead roles —— the English National Ballet’s artistic director Tamara Rojo and Royal Ballet stars and guest artists Acosta and Steven McRae — this $1.6 million production, partially funded to the tune of $300,000 through the Newman government’s Super Star Fund, is a high-stakes venture. Even for seasoned observers, there is surprise at just how dramatic has been the company’s ascendance since Li took over the directorship from 14-year veteran Francois Klaus in July 2012.
Li’s dramatic backstory, immortalised in Bruce Beresford’s 2009 film hit Mao’s Last Dancer, is well known: a poverty-stricken childhood; arduous dance training in revolutionary China; a life in America as a young dancer; a dramatic defection from his homeland while at the Houston Ballet; a glittering international career; and a role with the Australian Ballet as principal dancer. But it’s another personal reinvention that has people talking: Li is one of Australia’s most effective cultural rainmakers.
QB’s 2013 annual report reveals that last year season ticket holders increased by 153 per cent on the previous year to a record-breaking 4316. Three new full-length ballets were presented in the main stage and 15 additional performances were released. Since 2012, QB’s season ticket holders have grown from 1700 to over 5300. Last year, QB dancers were seen by more than 60,000 people in 103 live stage performances. Li also oversaw a 160 per cent increase in philanthropic and corporate income — a rare feat in these austere times and a welcome increase to the 2013 QB operating budget of $5.5m — and created a crowd-pleasing repertoire of classic story ballets (Cinderella, Nutcracker, Giselle, Coppelia) that saw sellout Brisbane seasons.
A consummate networker (“I dream big,” he says later over lunch), he’s leveraged his weighty connections to good effect, charming his way through the corridors of Queensland’s business, arts and political worlds.
In February 2012, soon after his appointment was announced, he hopped on a plane and went on a round-the-world networking trip, first visiting the Hong Kong Ballet, then London and the US, where his stops included his old stomping ground at Houston and the rising regional company the Tulsa Ballet. “Everywhere he went, doors opened,” Marsden says. “The level of goodwill was unprecedented.”
For Queensland Ballet, Li’s arrival is a happy accident: he’s taken the helm at a time when the image of Queensland as a cultural backwater has been well and truly shifted. “It’s a bit of a golden age,” says Marsden. Queensland has reinvented itself as arguably Australia’s ballet hub, there is the QPAC International Series, which since its launch in 2012 has brought the Bolshoi, American Ballet Theatre (performing in August) and Hamburg Ballet. Paris Opera Ballet and National Ballet of Cuba have also visited.
Li says the QPAC series has helped create wider interest in ballet and raised the profile of the art form in the state — “certainly having the likes of POB and the Bolshoi hasn’t hurt”. lt must be noted, however, that it’s proved to be a stiff competition for the ballet dollar. Then there’s the rise in Brisbane of the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art and an influx of new talent: Li has been joined by Lindy Hume at Opera Queensland, Noel Staunton at Brisbane Festival and Wesley Enoch at the Queensland Theatre Company.
If there’s anything that points to the change of QB’s fortunes, it is securing MacMillan’s version of Romeo and Juliet. Li got to know MacMillan well while at the Houston Ballet, and also grew close to his wife, the Australian-born Deborah MacMillan (who bonded with Li over his daughter Sophie when she was young; he speculates it was because she was deaf). Lady MacMillan will reportedly make her first visit to Brisbane in 26 years when Romeo and Juliet opens this month. Li flew to Sydney when she was visiting and convinced her, despite initial objections, that QB would be able to handle the size and scale of the work (Lawrence, among many others, speaks to Review about Li’s charmingly persuasive talents).
Li then turned to others with whom he had personal connections — the superstar trio of Rojo (ENB artistic director and lead principal), international star Acosta and the Australian-born McCrae (principal dancer with the Royal Ballet), who not only said yes but agreed to perform opposite QB’s dancers instead of each other — “a pretty rare thing”, as Marsden says.
At Queensland Ballet’s headquarters, there is a palpable energy flowing through the corridors. Li takes me through the building, all spare, elegantly industrial bones, high ceilings and exposed brickwork: he says the company has outgrown its space and he’s already plotting the possibility of a new base. We bump into music director Andrew Mogrelia, wearing a lime-green shirt and clutching Prokofiev’s score; he tells me later in passing there’s been an “amazing” turnaround in the company’s musical assets since Li’s arrival. (Rectifying an “appalling” dearth of live music, Li, a “philanthropic rainmaker extraordinaire” according to Marsden, raised the funds via donors and sponsors so QB was able to perform with the Camerata of St John’s and fund a full-time company pianist, among other things; Mogrelia was named music director and principal conductor last year. )
Marsden talks about the “nosebleeding” rise of the company: “In a bit over a year we’ve become a totally different company.” Li has forged an impressive track record, proving there’s always a way around roadblocks — from helping raise the $21m needed to finance the Beresford movie to getting wealthy Queenslanders to say yes to donations — his vision for this small company is characteristically grand: he sees it as becoming nothing less than an Asia-Pacific ballet powerhouse with a strong international touring presence, talks easily of sealing collaborations with international companies and carving up territories and rights.
“We’re already a strong regional company,” he says with some bemusement when asked about his plans. “Why not aim higher?”
Li’s achievements at QB have raised eyebrows in some circles: is it nipping at the heels of its national, much bigger and better resourced big brother, the Australian Ballet? But a veteran dance observer who has followed both companies dismisses these comparisons: QB would have to be twice its size to even be in the ballpark of the 70-strong AB: “It might give AB a run for its money in Brisbane, where the AB occasionally likes to go, but other than that, no.” The AB’s artistic director David McAllister says: “I think Li’s ambitions and visions for QB will greatly benefit the development of ballet in this country ... the stronger the state companies, the stronger the Australian Ballet.”
Li agrees the country can support three healthy ballet companies: (“our success should not cannibalise the others”) but it will be interesting, observers say, to see what Li will do on the back of his powerhouse networks and fundraising ability in the next few years.
OVER lunch in the boardroom, Li is in a reflective mood. In the flesh, he is a dapper, nimble figure in a lavender paisley shirt, with an ivory-skinned face of wide, smooth flat planes. He’s an intriguing study: this analytical, reserved if courtly figure is a vastly different man to the almost wildly theatrical, passionate, animated figure in the rehearsal studio. He’s made an art form of reinventing himself, adapting to his environment, but it’s easy to see the ballet studio is his natural sphere: here he is most himself.
He missed dance “terribly” throughout his stockbroking years at Melbourne firm Bell Potter, he confides: when the opportunity came to lead Queensland Ballet, he was initially hesitant at the commitment it required. He canvasses everything from the difficulties of creating a new generation of classic story ballets (where are the new Swan Lakes?) to dealing with egos and politics as artistic director (“it’s not about keeping everyone happy”). Always, there is talk of his vision for QB. Nearby a bust of French-born company founder Charles Lisner by sculptor Rhyl Hinwood serenely regards Li, who stares back in deep thought: Lisner was a visionary, Li says.
Founded in Brisbane in 1960 by Lisner, a Paris-born ballet dancer, choreographer and producer who created 30-odd ballets while personally helping to fund the company through its rocky early years, QB is the oldest professional ballet company in Australia, and one of only three in the country today.
After Lisner resigned in 1974, Harry Haythorne and Harold Collins followed; in 1998, the French-born Klaus, a former Stuttgart Ballet dancer under John Cranko, and later principal dancer at Hamburg Ballet under John Neumeier, began his stewardship of the company. Klaus was an instrumental force, creating much original repertoire, but in 2012 he resigned, reportedly as a result of tensions with then company chairwoman Joan Sheldon. The prevailing view was that the scholarly, cerebral Klaus was too introspective (“Francois was happiest in the studio,” Marsden says) and that the board was keen on someone with a more commercial sensibility and networking flair — like Li, for example. Asked if this view is correct, Klaus in an email to Review retorts: “You make me sound antisocial! Personalities are for others to judge but it’s true that we’re very different directors and I think we each reflect the cultural climate in which we were appointed. Back in 1998, I was hired as chief choreographer, coach and teacher, not as a fundraiser.”
Li has certainly catapulted QB on to the national radar. Observers attribute the company’s rise to the “Li effect”: it is a tale of what happens when a larger-than-life personality — complete with epic Hollywood-friendly backstory: what’s not to love about the tale of the rise of a Chinese rural boy, the sixth of seven sons, who grew up so poor that he and his friends once stole food from a rat? — lands in a small pool. He is a superstar to international dancers, from starry-eyed Bolshoi principals to young AB principal Chengwu Guo, who played the teenage Li in Mao’s Last Dancer. The latter says: “He (saw) my talent when I had just graduated from the Australian Ballet School, and took me on to do his movie; I learned so much about acting, so when I came back to the Australian Ballet to begin my professional ballet career, those good acting skills helped me a lot. It’s also one of the reasons I am a principal with the Australian Ballet today.”
McRae praises Li’s talent and star quality while Kevin McKenzie, artistic director of the American Ballet Theatre says: “Li brings the same sheer joy of movement and respect for the power of the art form to his directorship that he did for the American public as a dancer.” And Acosta tells Review: “Li has all the elements of a star. He has a remarkable story. But he was also a great dancer with strong technique, jump, great partnering skills and a terrific actor.”
Marsden says star effect aside — even now members of the public approach him with copies of Mao’s Last Dancer to sign — his arrival has sparked a kind of ripple effect in Queensland’s philanthropic culture (Li says a little sternly that “there’s a long way to go”, but there’s no doubt it has roared into life since he arrived, Marsden says, “which is benefiting not only QB but other arts companies in Brisbane”). His fans and friends range from John Ellice-Flint, former chief executive of Santos, whom Li has known since his Houston days (“It is a rare artistic director who has a strong sense of the bottom line — and Li has that in spades”) to former AB colleague Steven Heathcote, the Houston Ballet’s artistic director emeritus Ben Stevenson who hails Li’s “enormous determination” and former America’s Cup skipper John Bertrand, who says Li is a “dream-builder”.
Li’s is an admirably huge vision, but how realistic is it to achieve? To some observers, it’s too grandiose: Li will end up frustrated by the limitations a small regional ensemble has historically faced — a small audience base, limited repertoire, difficulties in attracting and keeping top-drawer talent, even — potentially — the supposed parochialism of conservative Queensland audiences, and the cost of having a non-choreographic director for the first time. (Rubbish, says Li tartly: he thinks it is cheaper to invest in solid pieces that last than having a director who creates new works that don’t).
Then there’s the issue of budgets. For all that this is a “golden age” for the company, Marsden says QB struggles with the same funding issues as other state arts companies. This comes as news to some, who have levelled claims the company was quarantined from the Newman government’s austerity budget, which cut arts funding from $245m in 2011 to $237.1m in 2012. Marsden vehemently denies this, saying “we are grossly underfunded compared to the other four majors in Queensland”.
Li dismisses the argument of naysayers who point to QB’s small size and scale as insurmountable barriers: he cites augmenting the ranks though its pre-professional program and other sources, as well as upcoming collaborations with the ENB and other international companies, and local joint ventures such as the recently concluded Coppellia, a co-production with the West Australian Ballet, and WAB’s upcoming La Fille Mal Gardee. “I think it makes great sense and allows a smaller company like us to stretch our resources much further. Instead of only having a budget of $200,000, suddenly you have double that, and this will buy you a completely different production, a completely different calibre of light and costume and set design.”
Marsden agrees. “I think that’s the new model for ballet companies. No one can undertake a new $2m ballet by themselves but if you do it with a partner, it’s a million dollars each. So with this model it will mean we are a global player. I look at international companies like the ENB, the Scottish Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet — they’re not the Royals and the Paris Operas, but they’re doing amazing things. I see us as one of them.”
The other big topic in dance circles is Li’s next move. Li was approached about the job of artistic director at the AB 10 years ago, and confirms he applied for it. The director has a four-year contract at QB with a four-year option; there is speculation, however, that once he kicks a few more goals he’ll be zooming in on the AB’s artistic directorship. McAllister’s contract will expire at the end of this year.
On that question, Li smiles. “I’m really focused on what I’m doing here. People who know me know I don’t look sideways. I have a vision here to realise and I will be committed to realising that vision. I don’t know how long it will take — two years, eight years, who knows? But that’s what is important as the moment. And I’m loving it.”
Marsden, however, is pragmatic. “Yes, it’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Look, he’s going to hate me saying this, but Li is an amazingly bright bird. And it would be wrong to trap him and force him to stay.”
“I hope we have him for the eight years — but I also think that if or when he leaves, he’d always be such an advocate for the company.
“To be honest, I would love to see what he does with a national company.”
Queensland Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet opens at Queensland Performing Arts Centre on June 27.
With thanks to The Australian
Biopics Now Focus On Key Moments Rather Than A Whole Life
The Best Movies Of 2014
Some Biopic Actors And Their Real-Life Counterparts
Baz Luhrmann's Strictly Ballroom Musical: Dance Is In The Air
Carlos Gardel And The Tango In Movies
A Look at a Legend: Rita Hayworth
Dance Mashup: Characters From Golden Era Of Movies Dance To ‘Uptown Funk’
