Cunxin Li

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 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.

At the age of eleven, the course of Li Cunxin's life would change forever, when he was chosen to study ballet at the Beijing Dance Academy. Eventually he became one of the world's best dancers.