How a former Inquirer journalist tracked down the dancer who inspired Balanchine’s Tea variation

The Nutcracker is such a popular ballet that most ballet companies rely on the revenue to carry them through the rest of the season. George Balanchine didn’t choreograph the first Nutcracker in the United States, but he is credited with making it a holiday classic. Philadelphia Ballet, New York City Ballet, and many other companies still perform the Balanchine version of Nutcracker, and the Tea variation is a crowd-pleaser for its fast turns and split jumps.

The dancer who performed in the role of Tea, the Chinese variation in Balanchine’s Nutcracker when it had its world premiere with New York City Ballet in 1954, was an unknown.

When researching at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, former Inquirer reporter-turned-filmmaker Jennifer Lin, of Doylestown, spotted the original dancer’s name, George Li, on a publicity photo.

Who was this George Li?, she wondered. He danced a principal role and was an Asian dancer at a time when there were very few dancers of color.

The dancer would eventually become the protagonist of Lin’s documentary, a short called Ten Times Better. The title refers to Li’s mother’s advice: Because he was not white, he would have to be 10 times better than everyone else to succeed.

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George Lee, as he later spelled his name, died April 20, at 90. But his last years would bring him back into the limelight, back to the School of American Ballet, where he trained, and back among New York City Ballet leadership and dancers. His name and story would be known.

But that day at the library, he was still an enigma to Lin, who grew up taking ballet classes in Center City and would go with her mother to see New York City Ballet.

“I’m poring through the clips and George got rave reviews everywhere,” Lin said. “Life magazine did a profile on The Nutcracker, and [photographer] Alfred Eisenstaedt had a picture of George that was the lead photo."

“I just became obsessed with, ‘Who is George Li?’ because he never danced with New York City Ballet again.”

It turned out she was not the only one wondering about this mystery dancer.

Arlene Yu, at the time the archivist at the New York Public Library, now with Lincoln Center, had the same question. So the two began sharing notes.

“She sent me a clip from Variety newspaper,” Lin said of Yu. “It was a one-sentence brief that unlocked the mystery.

“It was [from] 1959, it said ‘George Li, performing now in Flower Drum Song [on Broadway], became a citizen today.’ So all of a sudden: He was an immigrant."

That’s when Lin’s journalism skills kicked in.

“So then I went back to Ancestry.com. I found the ship manifest that had him coming to the United States in 1951 and it had his mother, and her name was Stanislawa Lee … I found his naturalization paper, and it had his date of birth. But more importantly, it said, ‘George Li changed his name today from L-I to L-E-E,’ and so now I have date of birth, correct spelling of his name.”

His mother was the key. Li and Lee are common Asian names, but Stanislawa is not. The Asbury Park Press had a 1980 obituary for her saying she was survived by her son, George, who lived in Las Vegas. It turned out she was a Polish ballerina who married a Chinese acrobat.

Further digging produced phone numbers for five George Lees in Las Vegas. The first four didn’t work, but Lin left a message on the fifth one — which turned out to belong to George Lee, the Balanchine dancer who danced in musicals and eventually became a blackjack dealer.

“He goes, ‘Why are you looking for me? I’m nobody,’” Lin said.

Lin went to visit a skeptical Lee in Las Vegas. He brought a friend with him, “because he thought it could be an elaborate scam,” Lin said.

He also brought a portfolio of photographs of him as a child in Shanghai, clips from the North China Daily, plus an ad in Russian that his mother and first ballet teacher had clipped and saved.

Lin later showed clips of his dancing to professionals. Was he really that good? Was he 10 times better? They all said yes. His dancing, and particularly the jumps and turns that inspired Balanchine to create the Tea variation, were extraordinary.

Lee was raised by a single mother in Shanghai after his father died. They eventually immigrated to New York, where he studied at the School of American Ballet and Balanchine spotted him.

So why didn’t he become a Balanchine dancer? In 2025, he likely would’ve had a career at New York City Ballet or another company. But in the 1950s, he was told he was too short.

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That initial meeting between Lin and Lee led to the film, Ten Times Better, that has been on a journey throughout the United States since it released in February 2024, mere months before Lee’s death. It has been featured in several film festivals, including the Dance on Camera Festival and the American Documentary and Animation Festival.

It will also be coming soon to PBS’s American Masters Shorts.

Area screenings of “Ten Times Better” include May 1, 3:30 p.m., Asian American Film Festival at The College of New Jersey. May 18, 1 p.m., County Theater, Doylestown. May 31, 1 p.m., Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival’s Spring Showcase at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.