Beijing Dance Academy

So the standard is very high.

And what happened was three of the core subjects that they decided to interview developed ties to the Beijing Dance Academy.

And that sounds benign on its face, but it's actually a quasi-government organization inside of China that acts as a soft power tool for the CCP.

And so we took a very close look at that, as well as some leaked documents.

It kind of became a sensation.

So first of all, it was just the kind of instruction video from, I think, Beijing Dance Academy.

And then now they are just popular memes on social media right now.

And people are imitating that kind of trend.

The performance won widespread acclaim when it appeared on China Media Group's annual Spring Festival Gala, one of the country's most-watched television programs.

Now China Media Group and Beijing Dance Academy are expanding the celebrated work into a full-length dance drama of the same title.

The production will premiere at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing in late November.

Ah Lai, a Tibetan writer from Sichuan province, has authorized the Sichuan Daily Press Group to adapt his novel, The Song of King Ghassar, and other works into animated films.

As a poor peasant boy, you were plucked from obscurity by visiting government officials.

They came to your school to select students, uh, to try out for the Beijing Dance Academy, and they were leaving your classroom.

Uh, and as they were walking out the door, your teacher tugged them on the arm and said, "What about that one?" Pointing to you.

When we look at the title of your latest book, The Lucky Son, do you think luck is something that you're granted or something that you make?

And-

Did you ever get to call home?

No, not, not during the time I was at the Beijing Dance Academy, and we're only allowed to see them once a year.

Mm.

Let's go to the remarkable story of Li Shunxian, born into utter poverty in Mao's communist China.

He was selected as a child to train at Madame Mao's Beijing Dance Academy, beginning a journey that would take him from that brutal seven-year training regime to becoming one of the world's great ballet dancers.

It's an extraordinary story.

And it, of course, was the book Mal's Last Dancer that he authored.

There were some behavioral issues from what we gathered.

And one of the key things is in The New York Times reporting is they never disclose the fact that these people develop ties with the Chinese Communist Party's Beijing Dance Academy.

And why is that significant? If you've seen the billboards for Shen Yun in your city or around the country, you'll see their tagline.

It's China before communism.

What thought have you given, if any, to how your digital memory is preserved? It's all coming up here on ABC Radio National.

But first, even if you've never been to the ballet, you're probably familiar with Mao's Last Dancer, the extraordinary memoir of Li Sun-Sing, which tells the story of how a young boy in rural China was plucked out of poverty to train at the Beijing Dance Academy and go on to become one of the most acclaimed ballet dancers in the world, eventually landing in Brisbane, where he was the artistic director of Queensland Ballet for a decade.

Mal's Last Dancer sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide and was adapted into an award-winning film.

And now more than 20 years later, Lee Swin Singh is releasing his long-awaited second memoir, The Lucky Son, which picks up where Mal's Last Dancer left off.

It was that kind of winter time.

And what was supposed to keep us warm was our class teacher told us to read this We Love You Chairman Mao text 10 times in a row, which obviously we grew up with Mao's political literature.

And in the middle of that reading, four men were let into our classroom, introduced to us as Madame Mao's cultural advisors from the Beijing Dance Academy.

And they were there to select talents to study ballet.