This is National Hispanic American Heritage Month.

And tonight we are spotlighting the Bluegrass Youth Ballet.

The group recently debuted a new dance created by the founder and director of the Bluegrass Youth Ballet, who says she was inspired by a true story that she heard while in Mexico, where she grew up.

I am from Lyon, Mexico, and I moved to the United States when I was 22 to pursue a career in ballet.

After my performing career, I was I had this dream of creating a place that was very inclusive and it had a positive environment.

And our mission was educational and cultural.

And I was able to use some of my background to create some of the ballets that have a lot of Latin bearing.

And they are, you know, educational, cultural in nature.

So it's been 21 years.

I'm very happy to be able to bring some of that here to our community and to educate our families and our children about what an Olympic is and just, you know, have fun with it.

I am the cheetah.

It's really exciting.

It's colorful.

It's fun.

Dancing with all your friends is very exciting and be able to portray this story has been an experience.

I was able to visit this little town called Arizona and this town, everybody in the village creates a library here.

So these little creatures are carved in wood, and they are very colorful and unique.

And library has was started by Beverly Norris in Mexico City.

So when I started doing researching research, I found very interesting thing.

And it just felt, you know, like just organic to turn this into a ballet because this story is based on a true story of Pedro Leonidas being sick and having a dreaming and dreaming all these creatures that transform from elements of Earth and scream that him, our liberty, his.

And the word liberty has doesn't mean anything, is just the name that he heard in his dreams.

I would say just the lightheartedness of it and the way it makes you feel.

I think after even just watching it from the sides, even just watching it in the audience after you see it, you just feel a sense of light and joy.

And I think that's the best part.

When we first start out, we're just kind of getting the movements and trying to get the choreography.

But as you go on, you kind of embody the character, for example, the cheetah.

You kind of have to be fierce.

As time went on, I kind of gradually got it over with.

I really wanted to work with children.

I really like children.

I think that they are, you know, in such a wonderful stage of immersion and engagement.

And I learned so much from each one of my students and to me, that was just, you know, the natural thing to do because I really like to work with kids.

And I know that kids can do so much when we have high expectations of them, and they've never proved me wrong.

So, you know, I'm always just standing on the wings, just absolutely amazed of of what they can do with a little bit of direction and energy and training.

Very nicely done.

Weather caused several performances to be canceled over the weekend, but they are planning to have makeup performances on October 12th and 13th at the Bluegrass Youth Ballet Studio.