Winter, Beijing, 2008. A blasting chill surrounded her and a crisp veil of ice covered the ground, yet she danced in the dirt, her lithe and slight frame draped in little more than a singlet and a floaty, summer skirt.

“It was freezing cold outside but we had to pretend that it was summer,” Camilla Vergotis reminisces of her time on the set of Mao’s Last Dancer.

“That was my favourite dance and it was so exciting. The villages had never seen the ballet before and they were jumping up and down.”

Based on the memoirs of Li Cunxin, director Bruce Beresford’s Mao’s Last Dancer tells the true story of a small boy who was plucked from a poor Chinese Village and taken to Beijing to study ballet.

From a gruelling apprenticeship as a classical dancer in communist China, to the glory of creative freedom as a prized ballet dancer in America, Mao’s Last Dancer is an inspirational exploration of emancipation.

Cunxin now lives in Melbourne and has worked with The Australian Ballet for several years.

It is for this reason that Vergotis, who played the role of Mary McKendry, an Australian ballerina and Cunxin’s second wife has a personal resonance with his story.

“I used to watch Li dance, and when I got into the Australian Ballet Company, I danced with him on stage,” she says, adding that she also read his best selling book.

“He’s such an inspiration person and has always helped me with my dancing. He’d come up and give corrections and help me with my pirouettes. I also worked personally with Mary McKendry and she’s a beautiful ballerina- so I really worked hard to be in shape for the movie.”

In a striking congruence to Li Cunxin, Vergotis emphasises that the most influential impact on her dancing career was her absence from home.

At 16 she left her family for Melbourne where she joined the Australian Ballet School, then later the Australian Ballet Company where she performed in a variety of principal roles over nine years.

It was then that Vergotis was granted a prestigious position in the Hong Kong Ballet, and at the same time, received her first film-call up for Mao’s Last Dancer.

“It was my final dance (with the Australian Ballet Company) and I was playing the role of Clara in the Nutcracker and didn’t realise the director was standing in the wings of the side stage,” she says.

“I didn’t think I’d have a chance of being selected and was about to move to Hong Kong when he knocked on my change room door and asked me to read for the role of Mary. It was a dream come true!”

Although it was her first professional film appearance, Vergotis found the transition from dancing to acting a relatively fluid one.

“In ballet you only have one chance to tell a story from the beginning to the end and you have the music to move you, but in acting, you might have to bring back emotion to a scene 10 times to get it right.

Although I got used to it and when I was dancing, I pretended I was performing on stage.”Although in a different time and under different circumstances, she too, like Cunxin would leave her country to dance in a foreign country.

Yet the irony of ‘country swapping’ was not lost, nor was the underlying theme of Li Cunxin’s story; family.

“I miss my family and that’s been my biggest sacrifice with my career,” she says.

“I only get to go back a couple of times a year but I’m still very close with them and I speak to my Mum two times a day- thank God Skype came to Hong Kong!”

Currently engaged and planning to marry in Australia in April, Vergotis and her fiance have relocated to Hong Kong to further their careers.

Camilla is still with the Hong Kong Ballet, yet does not rule out the prospect of another film role.

“I had such a wonderful experience with Mao’s Last Dancer so if something else came up, I would jump at it.”