One of my coworkers is a Chinese guy who in his youth had been a red guard. Most Americans would not what that means but when he told me that it sent a shudder down my spine because I had read the memoir “Life and Death in Shaghai”. The author Nien Cheng, whose husband had been head of Shell oil in Shanghai when the Communists came to power, told of her ordeal living during the Cultural Revolution. During the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s in China a weakened Mao Tse Tung turned over authority to his wife and three other members of the so-called “Gang of Four” who turned the country upside down in a nightmare worse than that envisioned by George Orwell in his novel “1984″. Teenagers who had been brainwashed against the evils of imperialism had been given free reign to round up perceived enemies of the state and parade them in the street as they wore banners proclaiming their crimes as having been, in the case Nien Cheng, aristocrats or other persons hostile to the communist revolution.

So it was with the parents of the dancer Li Cunxin whose true life story is depicted in the film “Mao’s Last Dancer” when their son fled to the capitalist West leaving the revolution behind and bringing shame on his family and country, so said their prosecutors. In the village where Li lived as a boy he had been indoctrinated by his teachers into an enforced deference to Chairman Mao with students dropping their studies of mathematics to sing songs praising the party when the officials came calling. The lucky boy was plucked from his peasant village life and transported to Beijing where he was trained to dance ballet. Communist officials who came to see the troupe said it was too western, decadent, and bourgeois because it did not depict the workers in their struggle with the capitol-owning classes. So the ballet added red flags, swords, and guns to their retinue over the objections of one of Li’s teachers who preferred classical studies. He had pushed Li to try harder to stretch his nimble body as far as Mikhail Barishnikov had done whose grainy image the students watched on a VCR hidden away from the prying eyes of the more politically compliant school officials.

Li was happy dancing the politically-themed ballet until foreign dancers arrived from the Houston Ballet. As part of a cultural exchange the Chinese sent Li back to Houston with admonitions to be warying of foreigners who tell lies and not become too enamoured of their bouregouis ways. There Li was shocked to find that people did not show deference to their President Nixon–at time the brash, swaggering Texans openly mocked him. Having arrived as a student Li was thrust into the spotlight of the professionals when the ballet’s leading male dancer was injured and Li took his place. With only three hours to learn the pas de deux the nimble dancer won over the audience and the ballet subsequently gave him top billing and made him a star. He fell in love with an blond American blond, so when China summoned him back Li decided he did not want to return to dance politically inspired ballet even while he worried what would happen to his family were he to defect.

This movie deserves more attention than is has received from the film critics. It tugs hard at the emotions as the boy and the audience together feel the strain of separation from one’s parents and the heavy burden of open conflict with one’s nation while standing on another nation’s soil. The scenes of village life in China are shot with a rough texture that makes them appear more rustic and real. And of course scenes of the ballet itself are beautiful to behold.