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.









1st October 2009
17 years ago
1 hour 57 minutes
Finishes at 3:50am
$25,000,000 ($38,677,500 today)
Revenue $23,914,731
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