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Chapter 14: Turning Points
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Mao’s Last Dancer, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Opportunity, Hard Work, and Success
Love and Family
The Power of Stories
Freedom vs. Repression
Summary
Analysis
Just before Cunxin’s 16th birthday, after repeated infections, the academy doctor orders him to the hospital to have his tonsils out after repeated infections. After spending three months on the waiting list, Cunxin reports to the hospital, where he undergoes surgery with Chinese acupuncture in lieu of anesthesia.
Cunxin describes his utterly barbaric unanesthetized surgery as if it was commonplace, suggesting the degree of deprivation to which Chinese people had become accustomed during Mao’s rule. In exchange for their loyalty, this suggests, the Chinese people experience unnecessary harm.
Themes
Cunxin may choose whether to go home for his three-week mid-term break or stay in Beijing. Although he misses his family, Cunxin chooses to stay—he’s trying hard to improve his crucial pirouettes. Thus, he’s at the academy when Gang of Four followers begin to be arrested. Cunxin watches as the current director and Zhang Ce are arrested for the crime of being appointed by Madame Mao. Despite the political upheaval, he enjoys the break. He practices daily but also takes time to sleep in, visit the Chongs, and go for walks around the city. Teacher Xiao encourages Cunxin to treat pirouettes like a mango—a rare and precious treat to enjoy rather than a chore to complete. And this inspires Cunxin to try even harder.
The ongoing political upheaval in the wake of Mao’s death gets closer and closer to the academy, offering Cunxin a pointed reminder that no one, ultimately, is safe in China. As hard as a person tries to conform to Party ideology and the whims of those in charge, when the situation shifts, they become liable to persecution and harm. Although he cannot yet fully imagine or articulate the alternative—freedom to be oneself—readers can see him growing increasingly disillusioned with his own society as time goes by. And he dedicates himself to his art like never before, pouring all his passion and energy into improving himself.
Themes
In the second half of Cunxin’s sixth year, an alumnus gives the academy a television, video player, and tapes of Western ballets as gifts. At first, only teachers are allowed to watch the videos, but eventually academy leadership relents and allows the students to watch the videos, alongside lectures denouncing their western elements. When Cunxin watches Soviet defector Mikhail Baryshnikov dancing for the first time, he becomes obsessed. He wants to dance like Baryshnikov, and he begins using every spare minute to practice, exercise, and hone his skills. He even stays up late at night, practicing his turns in an empty studio by the light of a single candle to avoid detection. He writes “fly” on his ballet shoes to remind him of his goals, and in honor of the birds he loves and whose graceful flights he longs to emulate.
Watching Baryshnikov dance proves to be a transformative moment for Cunxin. The Party continues to repress anything that it considers a danger to its power over China—anything that might encourage people to question whether the Chinese Communist system is the best system of government and society or not—hence the secrecy surrounding the videos. The Party acts as if the slightest suggestion of a broader world view than their own indoctrination might poison a person’s mind. And they’re not entirely wrong to think this: Cunxin does not always agree with what his teachers identify as problematic. And what he responds to most in Baryshnikov’s dancing here is its sense of freedom and artistic expression—the elements of dance with which the Chinese ballet world is least concerned. Realizing he needs to figure out how to develop these skills himself if he’s to succeed as a dancer, he turns to the studio and works hard on his own technique.
Themes
Cunxin’s rapid progress surprises everyone except Teacher Xiao, who encourages him—and worries that he might burn himself out and ruin his health. Changes occur in the academy around this time, too: Deng Xiaoping seizes leadership of the government, and Chinese society begins to change. The importance of political campaigns and education classes decreases. The academy gets a new director who extends the curriculum by a full year to make up for all the time the students spent early on studying politics. She demands technical excellence; for the first time, focusing on dance over politics doesn’t earn accusations of imbalance or capitalist tendencies.
In Cunxin’s experience, the Chinese Communist Party’s main goals for most of his life have been to ensure absolute conformity and ideological purity within society and to stand aloof from the rest of the world. With Mao’s death and Deng’s ascension to power, things begin to shift, subtly at first, as Deng opens China to the outside world. This marks a crucial turning point in Chinese society. And while the book at this moment emphasizes the changes in society, readers should remain alert for clues about the limitations of Deng’s approach, too.
Themes
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Western books, films, and performing groups begin to appear, slowly at first, in China. The students eagerly pass around formerly forbidden books, reading the juicy bits late into the night. They watch more and more films of famous Western ballets and ballet dancers. Eventually, Cunxin asks Teacher Xiao outright if he tucked the forbidden Western ballet book under his mattress years before. Teacher Xiao admits he did, and he asks if Cunxin liked the book. Cunxin says yes, and he thanks Teacher Xiao from the bottom of his heart.
As Chinese culture opens, formerly forbidden stories circulate among Cunxin and his friends. If the book he discovered as a child about the Chicago steel baron fired his imagination, having free access makes him yearn even more for the freedom these books represent. He begins to take small steps towards practicing freedom when he admits to reading the Western ballet book—and he discovers that not all the adults in his life have always followed the Party rules, either. Like Cunxin, Teacher Xiao holds the art of ballet in higher esteem than anything else, even the Party.
Themes
