Before you can fly, you have to be free.
Mao’s Last Dancer
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.
Bruce BeresfordDirector
Jan SardiScreenplay
Top Billed Cast
Amanda Schull
Elizabeth Mackey
Chi Cao
Li Cunxin - adult
Joan Chen
Niang
Bruce Greenwood
Ben Stevenson
Kyle MacLachlan
Charles Foster
Jack Thompson
US Federal Judge
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)
