Amanda Schull
Elizabeth Mackey
Mao’s Last Dancer (2009)
"Before you can fly, you have to be free."
65%
User
Score
Score
Overview
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 Beresford
Director
Jan Sardi
Screenplay
Top Billed Cast
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)
Recommendations
Coco Chanel
2008
Flamingo Road
1949
Footloose
1984
Step Up
2006
Billy Elliot
2000
Take the Lead
2006
The Greatest Showman
2017
A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate
1923
Save the Last Dance
2001
The Red Shoes
1948
The American
2023
Frances Ha
2013
Shall We Dance?
2004
StreetDance 3D
2010
The Turning Point
1977