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.
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.
"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
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.
Li,
53, the celebrated author and subject of the bestselling memoir and
international blockbuster film Mao’s Last Dancer, lauded international
ballet star, stockbroker, motivational speaker and artistic director at
Queensland Ballet, the man whom friends hail variously as a “wickedly” good
chef, dream builder, and “Everest-climber”, is valiantly trying to break through
a thick crust of habit and restraint as he takes the pair through one of
ballet’s best known and erotically charged scenes, the balcony pas de deux in
Kenneth MacMillan’s darkly stormy, revolutionary version of Romeo and
Juliet.
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
