"Mao's Last Dancer" by Li Cunxin

   

I enjoyed "Mao's Last Dancer" by Li Cunxin, tremendously.  The character of Li Cunxin is chosen to be a dancer at a young age.  He is just one of the many chosen during the Chinese revolution of the 1960's.  This is at a  time when stakes are high, and the chance of starvation for the Chinese people is even higher. 

One boy makes up his mind that he'll do all he can to practice dancing and pirouetting until he can't anymore. This is the difference between his family being able to eat or not at the end of the day.  Li Cunxin is thrown into taking one opportunity after another in the dance world.  He takes auditions as readily as he can, proving himself to be a confident young boy, even though he has no deep passion for dancing in itself, but knowing that dancing could feed his family.  

A reader can easily empathize with the struggles Li Cunxin is up against.  During  his training, he is taken away to an all boy's dance academy where he'd stay for months, even years at a time, without his family. 

This reminds me of modern day Chinese Olympic gymnasts who are taken away from their homes when they were as young as five years so they can be trained Olympians. And only when they achieved Olympic status would they be granted the opportunity by the government to see their family.  This only would be the highest award for these gymnasts (not even the gold medal itself).

The fact that the boy was deemed as flexible in the beginning was one of the main reason's he was chosen to be a dancer.  It was not his appearance or his families names, but the fact that he could bend to unbelievable proportions.  The boy took this fact and made it his dancing trait. 

How many of us have, had the chance to be the first at trying something new?  How many of us dared to contine to be the first even though we question our own interest in the pursuit?