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Chapter 15: The Mango
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
As Cunxin’s senior year winds down, Chinese culture continues to shift with Deng Xiaoping’s “open door policy” toward the West. The academy hosts a formal dance in honor of the graduating class and Cunxin learns how to waltz. Theaters begin to show so-called “colored,” or foreign films. The students sneak into as many as they can, enthralled by the beautiful actors and actresses and emotionally complex storylines, even when the poor dubbing makes it hard to understand what’s happening. One day, Cunxin and the Bandit sneak into a movie and so thoroughly lose track of time that they’re late for ballet class, disappointing Teacher Xiao. It’s around this time that Cunxin and the Bandit also discover girls, even though neither finds much luck in their attempts to court their favorite female classmates.
It’s telling that what Cunxin responds to in the foreign film isn’t so much the beautiful actors or the capitalist trappings like colorful costumes as the stories. Instead, he consistently responds to stories and the ideas they contain. And as he sits in the theater to watch these foreign films, he’s clearly less interested in the superficial aspects of Western life—the conspicuous consumption—than the emotional life that freedom allows. He expresses a desire to fall in love and have emotionally compelling experiences himself—desires the oppressive culture he grew up with did not teach him to have.
Themes
These distractions aside, Cunxin spends almost every spare minute practicing; he learns more about dance in his final year at the academy than in the previous six years combined. He continues to find inspiration in Western dancers, too, both those whom he watches on film, and those whom he sees in person. Shortly before graduation, the London Festival Ballet—and an 18-year-old ballerina named Mary McKendry—visits China and the academy. It requires a lot of dedication and effort for Cunxin to prepare the six solos—far more than any other student—he performs during his final exams. But despite Teacher Xiao’s worries that he’s overextending himself, Cunxin’s hard work pays off, and he masters even the most technically challenging moves.
Freed of the need to prepare its students to be artistic warriors for Chairman Mao and his Cultural Revolution, the dance academy focuses more on artistry after the rise of Deng Xiaoping. In this freer—though still circumscribed—space, Cunxin beings to really see the fruits of his hard work. He is unquestionably the strongest and most accomplished dancer of his class. But the restrictions on society mirror the limits on his artistic growth, and the book implies that he will soon once again find himself at the limit of what he can accomplish in China. Of all the dancers Cunxin sees in this period of newfound artistic exchange, he mentions only one, Mary McKendry, by name, and this hints that she will play an important role in in subsequent events.
Themes
When the class decides to revive Swan Lake for their senior performance, Cunxin earns the main role of Prince Siegfried. He loves the dancing but struggles to project a princely air. He’s just a poor country boy who grew up in a culture that encouraged people to hide their emotions; it’s hard for him to carry himself like an arrogant, passionate prince. He studies films of old Russian performances and copies what he sees, but deep down he knows that he will eventually have to find the confidence deep within himself to carry himself as a prince rather than a peasant. Soon afterward, Ben Stevenson, a famous choreographer and teacher from America, comes to the Beijing Dance Academy to teach two master classes.
Because the Party discourages individualism and treats its citizens less as human beings and more as tools to accomplish its aims, Cunxin doesn’t yet know how to value himself as a person. Therefore, he struggles to portray the confident, even arrogant, prince. But participating in the story of Swan Lake by dancing as Prince Siegfried offers him a chance to try on a new role for size. He hasn’t yet discovered his confidence, but the story promises him that one day he might—in the right circumstances. As soon as he reaches this conclusion, Ben Stevenson arrives from America, artfully implying that Cunxin’s path to further growth lies there.
Themes
