BRISBANE (AUSTRALIA) – Since Li Cunxin was plucked from rural China to join Madame Mao’s elite ballet school, through his exile in the US and now the pandemic, his life has been a reluctant pas de deux with politics.
The 59-year-old artistic director of the Queensland Ballet — one of Australia’s premier dance companies — prefers to focus discussion on his art.
But his ascent from humble beginnings has been punctuated by political turmoil — from the horrors of Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward to life in exile, to the anti-Chinese backlash of today’s coronavirus pandemic.
Li was born in 1961 as…
