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.
7.39K55%ROTTEN553.5Director
Bruce Beresford
Writer
Cunxin Li, Jan Sardi
Cast
View all →
Amanda Schull
Elizabeth Mackey
Chi Cao
Li Cunxin - adult
Chengwu Guo
Li Cunxin - teenage
Wen Bin Huang
Li Cunxin - boy
Joan Chen
Niang
Bruce Greenwood
Ben Stevenson
Kyle MacLachlan
Charles Foster
Jack Thompson
US Federal Judge
Camilla Vergotis
Mary McKendry
Madeleine Eastoe
Lori
Steven Heathcote
Bobby Cordner
Aden Young
Dilworth
Wang Shuangbao
—
Barbara Bush
Herself (archive footage) (uncredited)
George H. W. Bush
Himself (archive footage) (uncredited)
Mao Zedong
Himself (archive footage) (uncredited)
Bruce Greenwood
—
Kip Gamblin
David
George Ellis
Houston Ballet Conductor
Trailer
Featured In Lists
0Not in any public lists yet
When members add Mao’s Last Dancer to a public list, it will appear here.
