Mao’s Last Dancer(2009)

movie - first aired/released 2009-10-01 - 117 min - audience 6.6

Drama, Romance

Directed by Bruce Beresford

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.