From failure success flowed: What Mao’s Last Dancer did next
Li Cunxin was too busy to write a sequel to Mao’s Last Dancer until ill health caused his retirement and inspired him to complete The Lucky Son.
Writing a second memoir came relatively easily for Li Cunxin. The former international ballet star, former artistic director of Queensland Ballet and best-selling author was also, you will remember, the subject of the Hollywood film Mao’s Last Dancer, based on his best-selling memoir of the same name.
Now, after a couple of decades being prompted by his publishers, Penguin Books, Li has a new memoir out, The Lucky Son.
Li, 65, captivated the world with Mao’s Last Dancer – the extraordinary rags-to-riches story of how a poor peasant boy, the sixth of seven sons, was plucked from his classroom to train at the Beijing Dance Academy – a lucky ticket out of poverty, out of communist China – to become one of the world’s most acclaimed ballet dancers.
Li was indeed his niang’s (his mother’s) lucky son, and in his long-awaited sequel he reveals what happened next in this life that cheated fate, and wrestles with the blessings and responsibility of good fortune.
As a celebrated artist living in the West, Li is torn between two worlds and haunted by memories of his humble beginnings in rural China and the family he was forced to leave behind, all while building his own family with his former dance partner and beloved wife, Mary.
The Lucky Son is a joyous book about life, family, following your heart – and gratitude
Together they choose to make Australia home, and Li reinvents himself in one brilliant career after another, as principal artist for the Australian Ballet, savvy stockbroker, bestselling author, star corporate speaker and legendary artistic director of a new-generation ballet company.
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Along the way, he shares not just the story of his life in the West, but his hard-won life lessons on love, learning, leadership and legacy, and the power and possibility of dreaming big. The Lucky Son is a joyous book about life, family, following your heart – and gratitude. And at about 480 pages, I guess you would say it’s value for money. In more ways than one.
Literary types suffering from writers’ block would feel a tad envious of Li’s prolific writing style. Word counts obsess some authors but cop this – Mao’s Last Dancer was longer than War and Peace in its first draft.
“I never wanted a big book, but I ended up writing 680,000 words,” Li says when we chat at his former workplace, Queensland Ballet’s West End headquarters, the incredibly swish Thomas Dixon Centre. The $100 million-plus refurbishment is one of Li’s great legacies.
A few years ago he had to retire from the company due to ill health, and that was a shock to everyone since he is such a dynamo. But he had heart problems and wife Mary, also a former international ballet star, contracted cancer. The story of their health battles and dramas is told in frank detail in the new memoir, and the good news is that they are now both well.
Li now chairs Queensland Ballet’s Endowment Fund, so he’s still in the game. His years at Queensland Ballet are covered extensively, for better and for worse. I say for worse because those years included some difficult moments, including letting people go, something Li says he found difficult.
But the writing itself, well, that seems to flow with Li. Mao’s Last Dancer didn’t end up being 680,00 words. It was distilled to much less. The Lucky Son, also about 480 pages, had 300,000 words cut from Li’s original manuscript.
Mao’s Last Dancer was a blessing for Li and came after he was passed over for the job of artistic director of the Australian Ballet.
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“Writing my memoir came at a vital time in my life – Mary called it my mid-life crisis,” he writes in his new book. “It was a cathartic and deeply personal experience that allowed me to reflect, confront and process the pain I had carried for so long, which I hadn’t realised was buried deep I my subconscious mind.”
The new book came at the right time too.
“I started writing it soon after I retired in 2024,” Li says. “I knew I wouldn’t be able to sit still for too long because I’m a very action-oriented person.”
‘A certain part of our journey is fated, but we don’t know how or why’
He spent two years working on it and points out that there’s a lot to tell, since Mao’s Last Dancer only took us to the end of the 1980s. The Lucky Son covers his final years in the US, where he became a ballet superstar after famously defecting from Communist China. Then there was the move to Australia and the stellar career as a principal dancer.
After he finished dancing, getting knocked back for the top job at the Australian Ballet rocked his confidence. Mind you, he points out that if he hadn’t been rejected there would be no Mao’s Last Dancer, no successful career as a stockbroker between ballet gigs, no stellar career at Queensland Ballet and no new memoir. Interesting that everything hinged on an apparent failure.
“Things could have been completely different if I got the big job at the Australian Ballet,” Li says. “I think it is fate. I have become a bit fatalistic. A certain part of our journey is fated, but we don’t know how or why.”
And while this is a story that straddles the world of ballet it’s more a family story and a story of personal struggle. Li and Mary have worked hard for their achievements while raising three children along the way, one of whom, Sophie, is deaf.
Sophie’s story is at the heart of the family story and that story was also covered in Mary Li’s memoir, Mary’s Last Dance, which came out in 2020 and gave fans something to chew over while they waited for Li’s sequel to Mao’s Last Dancer.
Now Li has delivered again for his fans. Big time.
The Lucky Son by Li Cunxin, Penguin Books, $36.99
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