Chi Cao

Chi Cao ( Chinese  曹 驰 , Pinyin Cáo Chí ; born March 22, 1978 in Shanghai , People's Republic of China ) is a British ballet dancer of Chinese origin.

Cao was born in Shanghai as the son of a dance teacher and a musician. When he was four years old, the family moved to Beijing . He received his training as a classical dancer at the Beijing Dance School , whose director his father had become, and from 1993 at the Royal Ballet School in London . In 1995 he became a member of the Birmingham Royal Ballet and in 1992 the company's master dancer. In 1998 he won the gold medal of the International Ballet Competition , one of the world's most important ballet awards, for his dance performances in Varna . Together with his permanent partner, Nao Sakuma , he represented the company at the NATO gala 2000 in Birmingham and at the Queen's Golden Jubilee in 2002.

In 2008, Cao played the Chinese ballet dancer Li Cunxin in the film adaptation of his autobiography Mao's Last Dancer and was nominated for the Australian Film Institute's best actor award. Li himself recommended Chi Cao for this role because he is friends with his father.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Chi Cao. In: Oxford Reference. March 22, 1978, accessed February 4, 2017 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Paula Citron: A Rags-To-Riches Ballet Story. Langfield Entertainment, May 17, 2010, accessed October 21, 2014 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b} Chi Cao. (No longer available online.) Birmingham Royal Ballet, archived from the original on July 17, 2014 ; accessed on October 21, 2014 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.