Mao’s Last Dancer
Before you can fly, you have to be free.
At the age of 11, Li was plucked from a poor Chinese village by Madame Mao's cultural delegates and taken to Beijing to study ballet. In 1979, during a cultural exchange to Texas, he fell in love with an American woman. Two years later, he managed to defect and went on to perform as a principal dancer for the Houston Ballet and as a principal artist with the Australian Ballet.
- Year: 2009
- Country: Australia, China
- Genre: Drama, Romance
- Studio: Great Scott Productions Pty. Ltd.
- Keyword: dance, dancer, village, ballet dancer, rags to riches, promise, ballet, communism
- Director: Bruce Beresford
- Cast: Chi Cao, Chengwu Guo, Wen Bin Huang, Joan Chen, Bruce Greenwood, Amanda Schull