Mao's Last Dancer
2009, Film, 117 min, Biography, Drama, Music, English, Australia, MoviePedia score 68
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 falls 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.
Directed by Bruce Beresford
Cast
- Chi Cao as Li - as an adult
- Bruce Greenwood as Ben Stevenson
- Kyle MacLachlan as Charles Foster
- Penne Hackforth-Jones as Cynthia Dodds
- Christopher Kirby as Mason
- Suzie Steen as Betty Lou
- Madeleine Eastoe as Lori
- Aden Young as Dilworth
- Wen Bin Huang as Li - as a child
- Shu Guang Liang as Jing Tring - 8 yrs
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