Li's much-loved book of the same name has been sold in more than 20 countries, including China. He now lives in Melbourne with his wife and two children and was closely involved with the film, which will be released nationally on October 1.

Starring Jack Thompson, Kyle MacLachlan and Joan Chen, the movie introduces Chi Cao, a principal dancer with Birmingham Royal Ballet, in the role of the adult Li. "The greatest difficulty after casting Chi Cao in the role of Li was finding a Chinese village similar to the one Li grew up in," Beresford explains. "The villages have been razed and people have moved into apartment blocks. We had virtually decided to build the village as a set, when we found this place 100km or so from Beijing."

Ballet Theatre formed from former Lexington Ballet dancers who were laid off after an economic crisis rocked the company in 1998. Since then, Lexington Ballet had made attempts to re-form a professional troupe, but in recent years it has relied primarily on the talents of senior dancers in the school and guest artists to carry its performances.

This new octet comes at a time when Lexington Ballet is trying to regain the footing it had before 1998, when it was the lead dance troupe in town and one of Lexington's flagship arts organizations.

Sure, the exterior is shaping up visibly. Scenes of workers fastening curved ribs of structural steel amount to a daily progress report for passers-by.

But inside the scaffold-filled concert hall and proscenium theater, there’s plenty of progress to take in. Even deeper within the building, the power is up and running, and a warren of hallways, rooms and other spaces is alive with activity.

The young dancers, winners of the Youth America Grand Prix competition, take the stage tonight. Larissa Saveliev, founder and director of the Youth America Grand Prix, says this competition has turned into ``something huge because all ballet schools in the country try to participate. In Miami, you will see the winners, the créme-de-la-créme.''

Sunday's offering features Napoles Ballet Theater of San Francisco, directed by Luis Napoles, who specialized in Afro-Cuban and contemporary dance at the National Art School in Havana and had a career with the Ballet Theater of Havana and the Contemporary Dance of Cuba. In Miami, Napoles' company will perform his No More Strangers, with music by John Williams.

In total contrast is William Forsythe's cool, classy, neo-classical, "Workwithinwork" (1973), performed to Duetti for two violins by Berio. On a black box stage, sixteen dancers, dressed in sparkly purple, grey and pink with black shorts, juxtapose graceful balletic technique with jazzy moves, wide arm waves and high kicks, shifting with the subtle changes in tempo, shadow and light to slow duets and statuesque pauses. Berio's strident strings create a hauntingly beautiful score, while the choreography fits the music with split second timing, as neat as a pair of elegant, tight black evening gloves.

The evening began with "Scenes de Ballet", Frederick Ashton's 1947 one-act ballet (created for Margot Fonteyn) set to Stravinsky's romantic Broadway score. The Corps de Ballet costumes are divine: exquisite duck egg blue and yellow tutus with zig zag bodices, cute black and white pill box hats, bracelets and pearls.