I had heard a little about this Russian ballet star. He was the ballet world's new phenomenon. "Is he better than Vasiliev?" I asked.
"Yes! Yes, from the technical point of view. I have never witnessed a more spectacular dancer!" Teacher Xiao said, and he shook his head with amazement.
"Is there any way I can get to see those videos?" I asked hopefully.
"We've discussed this already," Teacher Xiao replied. "The officials are worried about capitalist influences. Let me speak to Teacher Zhang again."
A couple of days later, during an afternoon rehearsal, all the senior students were called to a studio on the third floor. I immediately noticed the television and video player sitting on a bench in front of the mirrors.
Zhang Shu waited for the excitement to calm down.
"Baryshnikov is probably the most outstanding ballet dancer in the world today. The sole purpose of watching these tapes is for you to learn from him, to make you understand what today's world dancing standard is. This is not, I repeat, this is not for you to learn about the Western world's lifestyle! By watching Baryshnikov, you will realise how hard you have to work to reach this same standard of dancing. Today, we'll show you Baryshnikov's own production of Nutcracker and The Turning Point.
I was captivated with Baryshnikov. I had never seen anything like Nutcracker before. I couldn't believe how beautiful the music was. Baryshnikov and his partner Gelsey Kirkland danced to a standard far beyond what I thought any dancer was capable of. During the five-minute break between videos, not one of us left the room: everyone was afraid of losing their spot. How could anything rival Nutcracker? I thought. But I was wrong. The video of The Turning Point totally blew me away. I was mesmerised. I couldn't take my eyes off Baryshnikov. My heart leapt with each one of his astonishing jumps and accelerating turns. His movement was graceful, his execution brilliant. For the first time in my life I saw how truly exquisite ballet could be.
From that moment on I loved ballet with a passion. I dared to believe that if Baryshnikov could dance like that, then so could I. I was sixteen years old, but I was impatient. I felt a new sense of urgency. I scrapped my previous standards and set new ones. This was how I could make not only my parents but also the whole of China proud.
Now I raced through my meals so I could get back to the studio to practise my jumps. I woke at five every morning. I strapped sandbags to my ankles and hopped up and down the four flights of stairs in our studio building. I practised my leaps, covering every inch of whichever studio was vacant. I was obsessed. I wanted to fly like the beautiful birds and dragonflies, so I wrote the word "fly" on my ballet shoes to remind myself of my goals. I embarked on endless sit-ups and exercises everywhere I could find a flat surface and a few minutes to spare. People thought I had gone mad but I didn't care. I had only one desire now-to dance like Baryshnikov.
By the end of 1977, my sixth year, after all of my exercises, practice and determination, my jumping ability had improved, but I still wasn't the best. I knew there was a long way to go. It was then that Teacher Xiao started to challenge me with my turns.
I couldn't turn naturally but my newfound inspiration with my jumps made me work harder and harder. I set impossible goals for myself. One night I had an idea. When everybody was asleep I went to the studio, with a candle and a box of matches. I put the lighted candle at one end of the studio and started to practise my turns. The candle threw only a faint light in front of me. It was hard, but I thought if I could turn in the dark, then turning in the light would be easy. I couldn't take the risk of turning the light on, of my teachers catching me staying up so late, but I continued, night after night, relentlessly. By the end of the term I had left shallow indentations in the studio floor where I had endlessly, repeatedly, turned.
Many people were very surprised to see my rapid improvement, but not Teacher Xiao. One night, he did catch me practising my turns. It was way past lights-out time and I thought he would be very angry but instead he said he wasn't surprised and he kept my night-time practice sessions a secret between us.
I realised too, around the same time, that I couldn't do a perfect split either and knowing the importance of being able to have that flexibility I worked hard on my hamstrings. I once fell asleep in bed in the split position and when I woke I had to be helped up by my classmates because I couldn't feel my legs at all. One of the teachers told me then that I had big thighs and that I would never do principal roles with thighs like mine. I was depressed for so long about this. I even wrapped plastic around my thighs so they would sweat and become thinner.
By now I was practising in those studios five times a day compared to the usual once-a-day routine of the other students. I practised when I first got up. I practised before class, at nap time, at afternoon rehearsals and after dinner just before bedtime. When I ran out of dry T-shirts, I would practise bare-chested. Even my ballet shoes would be soaking with sweat. "I thought I worked hard as a student-I practised three times a day, but five times is unheard of!" Teacher Xiao said, amazed. Then, more seriously: "Please look after your health. I want to see you last the distance."
By this time, Mao's chosen successor Hua Guofeng was under house arrest and Deng Xiaoping became the leader of China. I felt a dramatic change of attitude within the Beijing Dance Academy. Previously, Deng Xiaoping had been denounced for his slogan about the cat: but now this idea came back in full force. He didn't care which system China used as long as it worked for China.
We had a new academy director too, Song Jingqing, who decided that our six-year course of study would be extended for another year. We wouldn't graduate now until February of 1979. We'd wasted too much time, she said, studying politics instead of dance. Director Song believed that another year was needed to concentrate on the pursuit of technical excellence alone.
So even by the beginning of 1978 I could feel the real impact of Deng Xiaoping's reforms. He was the first person who had dared to say that to follow Mao's every word was wrong and that the political campaigns and studies must be stopped. Some Communist Party members were sceptical and so were many others. The Cultural Revolution had left such horrifying memories. Why should they believe new policies now? China was unsure, and too numb to act quickly.
It was during our last year at the academy that we began to openly practise our art form without being accused of being an unbalanced student. Political pressure waned. Selected Western books, films and performing groups began to appear in China. Getting hold of a foreign book or watching a foreign "coloured film" soon became an obsession. We were desperate for Western knowledge. If we came across a book with sex scenes in it we'd secretly copy it, every word by hand, under our blankets, in torchlight, and pass the copies around. How thirsty we were for foreign literature and how fascinated we had become about the Western world!
Deng Xiaoping's new policy created a breath of fresh air within our academy but it was strangely foreign at first. The required bi-weekly Communist Youth Party meetings were reduced to once a month and no one questioned it. My conflict between attending meetings and practising ballet was resolved. The Communist Party's pursuit of new membership slowed and political party leaders no longer had the same influence. The pursuit of material things, that capitalist tumour, began to take on a different meaning. Maybe it was because the Beijing Dance Academy was one of Madame Mao's strongholds and her influence was so deep for so long, but it took a while before we started to embrace Deng's new policies wholeheartedly. For me, however, this extra year of study turned out to be my best yet. We started to watch some old Russian ballet films such as The Stone Flower, Swan Lake and Spartacus. We saw famous ballet stars like Galina Ulanova, Maya Plisetskaya and of course Vladimir Vasiliev. We were even allowed to watch that famous Russian defector Rudolf Nureyev dancing with one of the Western world's most respected ballerinas Margot