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 Greenwood
as Ben Stevenson

Kyle MacLachlan
as Charles Foster

Joan Chen
as Niang

Chi Cao
as Li Cunxin - adult

Amanda Schull
as Elizabeth Mackey

Wang Shuangbao
as Dia

Aden Young
as Dilworth

Jack Thompson
as Judge Woodrow Seals

Penne Hackforth-Jones
as Cynthia Dodds

Chengwu Guo
as Li Cunxin - teenage