(gentle music) - [Lexi] Oh, that's what we live for.

(laughs) I think any dancers can tell you the stage moments are the magical moments.

In the zone, like that's what I feel most natural.

It's almost you just forget about everything.

(singer singing in Chinese) - I've always been like a stage girl.

I feel like before I'm like, you know, it's okay.

And then I like have a little woo!

And then when I'm on stage I'm like, "I'm rocking this."

- This is surreal for me.

Like today, I never thought I would be able to perform in front of crowd and people that I don't know.

So yeah, it's sort of like dream come true, but it's a surprise dream come true.

- My name is Lexi Liu, I've been in North Dakota for a little bit over 10 years.

Moved here with my families in 2015.

So as a kid, I loved dancing.

It was one of my biggest passion, but I didn't get to dance as much as I wanted to because my parents wanted me to gear toward academic side.

So as adult, I start dancing more and just pursuing it, taking dance classes, and kind of learning choreographies or freestyling.

So after I moved here in 2015 with my family, the United Chinese-American Fargo-Moorhead started hosting Chinese New Year celebration, and that's when like once a year, all the Chinese Americans get together.

So it kind of started slow.

I think it was Yechun.

I call her my dance wife, we dance together.

And we are like, we work great together as in CHORD a Chinese heritage of recreation dance.

So we started our first long sleeve dance in 2017, I believe, and then just went from there.

- I came to United States in 2002 going to graduate school.

I definitely love dance.

I want to be a dancer.

When I was little, I actually danced on my own randomly when I was little at home.

- And then we were like, "Well, you know, since more people are interested in this art form, why don't we show it to the local folks instead of just keeping it in our small community?"

So that's when Annie, Yechun, and myself, we organized the Chinese Heritage of Recreation and Dance that's affiliated with the UCAFM, and we started having more organized dance practices, recruitment, and organizing like public relations to have fine chances to dance in the community.

So it's been a great journey.

(bright music) Traditional Chinese dance form dated back thousands of years to the (speaking Chinese) the Silk Road.

They have the cave paintings that have, it's actually one of the swirl dance that was painted on the wall in the Silk Road.

You kind of got infected that way in a good way.

You learned how the story behind it, so the traditional Chinese dance has many genres, and there are stories behind it and the musical instrument are often traditional as well.

So as for the choreography, there's a lot available on the internet that we can search it up, and then change it to accommodate to our level.

- Then when we move to this country and realize there's big cultural differences there.

And also there's surprisingly some common stuff between different art forms or between different dance forms and even some moves in Chinese dance are similar to ballet even.

So it's very interesting to bring it to Fargo in this area to show people the differences and show them the common areas and then maybe we can sparkle something new.

The style is a mixture of pop song and Chinese opera.

There's a middle part that's a very typical Chinese opera passage, like pretty much every Chinese opera would use that passage to link from section to another section.

- [Lexi] My two apprentices, Gabby and Cadence, they are wonderful learners.

They pick up the choreography so fast.

The long sleeve dance represent the Tang dynasty and the tambourine dance, which is in Yuan dynasty, which is like a little bit more modern compared to the long sleeve dance.

(gentle music) - Being a Chinese American coming from immigrant parents, I feel like I'm losing culture a little bit.

So like being able to dance and perform part of my culture brings me closer to it, and I feel like I should share that.

- We actually went back to China this summer, and I got to take Chinese dance lessons from an instructor.

And she was very kind, and she really dug deep into the roots.

And I think we also do that dance and we learn about what the dances really mean, which I feel like would definitely bring me closer to my culture.

- The one thing I like to teach my apprentices is being a dancer doesn't mean like how high you can kick or how many turns you can do.

It's about how you can express yourself through the dance.

So really imagine yourself in that cultural environment, like in that full moon festival, like you're curious about everything and you're just cheerful.

It's a two hour class normally we have.

Of course I learn the choreography first, and then I will demonstrate, and then they practice.

(bright music) - We have already started to think about what new dances we are gonna do.

We are pretty ambitious in that.

Yeah, I want the audience to first of all appreciate the music itself.

It's obviously different from people here.

And then just purely enjoy the music, enjoy the visual effect that we created.

- I think this is something I didn't think about when I was in China because I was in it.

It was like not that special.

But while we are living in here, we have less opportunity to practice, to celebrate.

And all the special days seem more special.

Therefore, being able to dance with my friends and dance with my own family and the younger generation means a lot to me because I love Fargo.

I love the whole atmosphere in North Dakota.

But I also want to bring more to here because we want to make positive influence to the world.

(dramatic music) - [Announcer] Funded by the North Dakota Council on the Arts, and by the members of Prairie Public.