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 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.

Cast

Bruce Greenwood

Ben Stevenson

Kyle MacLachlan

Charles Foster

Joan Chen

Niang

Chi Cao

Li Cunxin - adult

Amanda Schull

Elizabeth Mackey

Wang Shuangbao

Dia

Aden Young

Dilworth

Jack Thompson

Judge Woodrow Seals

Penne Hackforth-Jones

Cynthia Dodds

Chengwu Guo

Li Cunxin - teenage

Wen Bin Huang

Li Cunxin - boy

Madeleine Eastoe

Lori