Unlike earlier films in his career, Dada's Dance successfully negotiated the Chinese censorship apparatus and emerged unedited and unchanged from Zhang's original cut.

Her neighbor, Zhao Ye (Li Xiaofeng) spies on her through her open window each morning as she dances to salsa music and gets ready for the day.

During one of these episodes, an argument occurs and her mother's boyfriend falsely claims that Dada was adopted.

Armed with this information, she drags Zhao Ye and heads south to a small village where she meets a woman who could be her birth mother.

Indeed, early reviews from Variety and The Hollywood Reporter derided the film as "a notch down from [Zhang's] best work"[3] and "light on substance,"[4] respectively.