Mao’s last dancer on the ‘million dollar question’ about his future at Queensland Ballet
As whispers continue about just how long Li Cunxin will stay with the Queensland Ballet, the acclaimed artistic director has finally addressed the rumour mill.
QWeekend
Don't miss out on the headlines from QWeekend. Followed categories will be added to My News.
When Queensland Ballet’s artistic director Li Cunxin first told friends in Melbourne that he was leaving to live in Brisbane most of them responded with a question.
“Even our dearest friends asked ... why?” Li says.
“We did have an idyllic life there. My book was a success, the movie based on it did well, I had a very successful stockbroking business. I was in demand as a public speaker.
“To give all that up and leave our three children was a big deal. And we were also leaving behind three nieces we had sponsored from China and they are like additional daughters.”
Li had been passed over for the job as artistic director of The Australian Ballet, which is based in Melbourne but had carved out a new career as a stockbroker and author. His 2003 memoir Mao’s Last Dancer, was a sensation and the Hollywood film directed by Bruce Beresford reached an even wider audience.
Everyone knew about his incredible ascent from rural poverty in China to international ballet stardom.
That made him one of the most recognisable figures in the ballet world. Now, at 61, he is celebrating 10 years with Queensland Ballet.
At lunch to chat about that I trot out the usual platitudes about such a milestone.
“Ten years?” I say. “I can’t believe it. It only seems like yesterday that you arrived. That decade has just flown by.”
And he nods, smiling before glancing at the folks at a nearby table who seem to have recognised that I am lunching with Mao’s Last Dancer.
“The people at that table have been smiling at me ever since we arrived,” Li says. “A lot of people do recognise me and they come up and say – ‘we love your work, you’re doing a great job’. They are grateful and it’s very nice.”
When he first arrived in town I wrote a piece entitled Meet Mr Li. Most people know him as Li and refer to him as Li but of course Li is actually his surname. Surnames come first in Chinese, but he’s happy to be addressed in that way.
We have come to lunch from a ballet class led by Li and sitting in on that I see another side to him. In the ballet studio Li is more serious. He’s a hard taskmaster, hard but fair, correcting dancers as they go through their paces. I feel sorry for a couple of the younger dancers who are singled out but Li demands perfection, the kind of perfection that was demanded of him as a boy when he was plucked from obscurity by Madame Mao herself to train at the Beijing Dance Academy.
He eventually defected to the west in 1981, during a visit to Houston in the US and the rest is history.
He danced all over the world and has now ended up in, of all places, Brisbane and he reflects that not getting the job at The Australian Ballet probably happened for a reason.
Wife Mary, his former partner on stage, now ballet mistress at Queensland Ballet is a Rockhampton girl and had family in Brisbane and helped talk Li into taking the job here and he says he has come to love Brisbane even if some friends couldn’t fathom the move.
In the ten years since he arrived the company has pretty well soared into the ballet stratosphere, garnered international attention and has set box- office records year after year. Of course being a new broom Li made some changes and some people weren’t happy with that.
Recently I was in conversation with someone whose career ended not long after his arrival and there was a tinge of bitterness but that was quickly followed by an admission that what Li has done is nothing short of amazing.
Sitting watching him teach class I note that the room is full. “When I first came we had 23 dancers,” Li says. “Now we have 60. It is phenomenal. When I came the company had less than 50 staff, now we have more than 150.”
There’s a palpable sense of excitement about everything Queensland Ballet does now, which makes it all the more devastating that the Brisbane main stage debut for this year, Giselle, had to be cancelled due to the flood-affected closure of the Playhouse at QPAC.
But there are still plenty of highlights with the big one this year being Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon in the Lyric Theatre at QPAC in September.
Up next in early June is Li’s Choice, a triple bill chosen by Li to celebrate his decade of directorship. Li’s Choice will feature We Who Are Left, a war piece choreographed by Natalie Weir; Greg Horsman’s Glass Concerto, styled to the music of Philip Glass; and MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations.
“That MacMillan work is very jazzy and features the music of Scott Joplin,” he explains. “It’s colourful and humorous and the musicians will be on stage. It’s a piece I have always wanted to do.”
The work we will see after that is Peter and The Wolf, and later in June the Queensland Ballet is scheduled to open the new theatre at its revamped home, the Thomas Dixon Centre in West End, which has had a $100m makeover.
The opening of the centre will be another milestone in a decade of milestones which includes the establishment of the Queensland Ballet Academy at Kelvin Grove which is now training the next generation of dancers.
The company is also building a production centre at Yatala, halfway to the Gold Coast, where it has a new partnership with Home of the Arts in Surfers Paradise.
There are so many highlights of Li’s decade at Queensland Ballet but first he’s keen to point our that he didn’t invent the company.
“I inherited a company which had been nurtured and developed by my predecessors … Francois Klaus, Harold Collins, Harry Haythorne and Charles Lisner,” Li says.
He started with the company in May 2012 and hit the ground running with a 2013 season at which all Brisbane performances sold out.
One of the first things he did was to establish The Nutcracker as an annual tradition for the company and he brought his mentor, the legendary choreographer Ben Stevenson from Houston to Brisbane to launch that tradition.
His close friendship with Lady Deborah MacMillan resulted in a spectacular production of Romeo and Juliet in 2014 and, in 2015, he took the company to London for the first time.
“There are moments of great pride as I look back,” Li says. “One such moment was when the curtain went up on La Sylphide by Peter Schaufuss at the historic Coliseum Theatre (in London). Over seven performances our dancers made their mark upon the world.”
The company has attracted some of the world’s best dancers for guest appearances in Brisbane including the great Carlos Acosta and Tamara Rojo, among others. And the company has gone on to perform in the US and in China, which was a very special homecoming for Li. Later in the year, as if to make a point, the company goes to Melbourne to perform in a program for The Australian Ballet. So there.
Last year the company celebrated its 60th anniversary and while 2021 was a milestone, 2022 seems to be an even bigger one. Sponsorship has skyrocketed, tickets sales are always strong and it all looks so effortless. Is it?
“A lot of people see the success, which is great,” Li says. “But what most people don’t realise is the headaches, heartaches and setbacks and all that we have to deal with.”
There have been rumours on numerous occasions that Li was leaving Brisbane, but when the job at The Australian Ballet came up again he says he wasn’t tempted.
“People are often asking about all that,” Li says. “It’s the million-dollar question. But I have signed on until 2025 and I will keep going as long as I have vision, fresh ideas, energy, passion and good health. If one of those ingredients is missing I will have to think about it. I’ve always said I don’t want to be someone who overstays his welcome. I’d rather stop at the top.”
Of course he seems to be at the top now, but he keeps finding new summits. Li wanted to make Queensland Ballet an international ballet company and he seems to have done just that.
‘This one of the most undignified things you can do in public’
With breakdancing ruled out of the Olympics for the Los Angeles 2028 Games I have some ideas for some other non-traditional sports to be showcased.
Virginia Trioli on love, life and the search for happiness
For ABC broadcaster Virginia Trioli, life – like good food – is not always about the main event.