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Mao’s Last Dancer
AUSTRALIA · 2009

Mao’s Last Dancer

Bruce Beresford
defection cultural exchange forbidden love artistic ambition Cold War politics
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Synopsis

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.

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