by Luanne Paul King

Mao’s Last Dancer

December 2010 — Last August, I was surprised to learn that Mao’s Last Dancer would be screened at the Vogue Theatre in San Francisco. I made a reservation as recommended. Many critics had panned the film as a story lacking depth. Well, forget the critics. Audiences have another take: they love it! Why? It’s the real-life story of ballet notable Li Cunxin (Chi Cao).

In 1972, when Li was an 11-year-old Chinese boy living in a rural village, he was taken from his peasant mother Niang (Joan Chen) and his father to be trained as a Beijing ballet dancer. He must live with other boys in the ballet school. They practice many hours, day and night. The training is extensive, the years long. Eventually Li travels on tour to the U.S. in a cultural exchange. He lives in Houston and studies with the ballet director Ben Stevenson (Bruce Greenwood). When he debuts as a principal dancer he is very successful. He also has a loving bond to a young woman who also is a dancer. Li declares to Chinese authorities that he wants to stay in the U.S. They deny him permission to stay longer and try to abduct him. Li has to hide from them. What do you think happens then?

2 hours 7 minutes. Rated PG.

Keeping Score: Copland and the American Sound

This DVD includes — among other things — a live performance of Copland’s Appalachian Spring, performed by the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.

When composer Aaron Copland was born in 1900, almost all genres of music were being transformed. He grew up in multi-ethnic Brooklyn, and as he matured he heard many of the new experimental jazz musicians. In the fearful time of the Great Depression, people began to rally as the country entered World War II. Copland wanted to convey, through his music, how people felt about these experiences. The music he composed was unique in that it captured both the vast quiet of American plains as well as the sounds of large cities. Copland created music that evoked many sounds: Jewish music, African-American jazz, folk songs, ballads of cowboys and Latin American dances.

In 1944, Appalachian Spring was composed as a ballet score for dancer Martha Graham, who received some funds from the Coolidge Foundation. Copland received a Pulitzer Prize for it in 1945. The work was written for a small chamber orchestra. That same year, Copland rearranged the ballet work as an orchestral suite. Graham is the one who suggested the name Appalachian Spring, a phrase from the Hart Crane poem “The Bridge.”

O Appalachian Spring! I gained the ledge;

Steep, inaccessible smile that eastward bends

And northward reaches in that violet wedge

Of Adirondacks.

While many people think the word “spring” in the title refers to the season, it actually refers to a source of water in the Crane poem.

86 minutes. Rated R. Subtitles in German, French and Spanish.