One of the street dance pioneers in the region was Firkat Bahadeer, a Uygur who was born and raised in Urumqi. He will participate in the street dance session of the festival. His father, who taught mathematics at Xinjiang University and studied in Japan in the early 1990s, showed Firkat a video of Japanese street dancers, introducing him to the dance form.

Firkat, who graduated from the law school at Xinjiang University and worked briefly as a lawyer, decided to quit and travel to Shenzhen, Guangdong province, and then to Shanghai in 2001. After training with professional street dance performers, Firkat opened his own street dance studio, DSP (short for "dream, soul and passion") in Urumqi.

"We had street dance competitions in Xinjiang. Those competitions felt more like a festival, where dancers practiced, communicated and had lots of fun together," says Firkat.

Contact the writer at [email protected]