Mao’s Last Dancer (2009)

Mao’s Last Dancer is based on the autobiography of Li Cunxin. Cunxin was plucked from a poor Chinese village at the age of 11 by Madame Mao’s cultural delegates and taken to Beijing to study ballet. In 1979, during a cultural exchange to Texas, he fell 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.