Li was selected for the Beijing Dance Academy at the age of eleven and spent the next seven years of his life living there and training to be dancer. The artistic director of the Houston Ballet, Ben Stevenson, visited Beijing in 1978 and Li was offered a six-week scholarship with the company. The Chinese authorities granted him permission to accept; however on his return to China, Li became increasingly questioning of the communist system. He was again reluctantly granted leave to join the Houston Ballet for one year in 1979 and in mid-1981 when he was due to return to China, he defected.
Li was promoted to Principal Dancer with Houston Ballet in 1982. In 1987 he married an Australian dancer, Mary McKendry, one of his partners at the Houston Ballet. In 1995 he joined the Australian Ballet as Principal Dancer.
He has received numerous awards in prestigious international competitions in the United States, Japan, and Russia
The Peasant Prince
Camberwell
:
Viking
,
2007
Z1435037
2007
single work
picture book
children's
(taught in 1 units)
'In a poor village in northern China, a small boy is about to be taken away from everything he's ever known. He is so afraid, but his mother urges him to follow his dreams. For soon he will become a dancer, one of the finest dancers in the world...' (Publisher's blurb)
