When Penguin Books Australia published Li Cunxin’s best-selling autobiography Mao’s Last Dancer in 2003, Julie Watts, who edited the book, tried to encourage his wife Mary Li to write an accompanying memoir.

At first, Li (formerly Mary McKendry), a former, high-flying ballerina who met her husband when they danced as partners for Houston Ballet, wasn’t interested.

“I had no intention [of writing a book],” she tells Limelight. “And I wouldn’t have written it without Li’s editor Julie. She always wanted my book and I’d laugh at her and say, ‘You know I’m not going to do that, Julie’ because I always knew the amount of work it takes to write a book and I’m a very busy person. I love my work (as a ballet mistress) and I didn’t want to be working after work, which is what Li did.”

Mary Li. Photograph © Mikala Connor

“I live with a whirlwind and I have three children of my own, and one with a disability, so I was very time consumed and I really wanted to keep up my real passion, which was dance so I never had any spare time and I’m not a writer...