BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan: Dong Qian is 15. Traveling for the first time to a foreign land, she feels both excited and nervous. Among the audience of her first overseas performance tonight will be 10 heads of states and senior ministers and officials of other countries and organizations.

"I feel a little bit nervous, but we have the dance in our mind. I hope viewers will like our program and I am expecting a big applause," said Dong, who is the youngest performer in her troupe.

The dance performance, Misty Rain in Southern China, will make its overseas debut at the cultural gala during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek. "We will get only 6 minutes on stage," said Deng Jingshan, head of the 41-strong Chinese cultural team comprising Hangzhou Song & Dance Troupe and Zhejiang Arobatic Troupe. The team was selected from among hundreds of candidates.

"It's difficult to bring out the essence of Chinese culture in such a short time, so we reprogrammed and refined our performance during our rehearsals till we were sure we wouldn't waste even a single second," Deng said yesterday.

The program is based on a millennium-old Chinese love story, Lady White Snake, in which a man and a white snake-turned-beautiful-woman fall in love.

"It's a combination of dancers' gracefulness and acrobats' gallant movements," deputy director of Zhejiang Acrobatic Troupe Chen Ping said.

The main props used in the 6-minute performance will be umbrellas and silk fabrics, reflecting the softness, grace and elegance associated with Chinese culture.

"If the ongoing joint military exercise of the SCO is a show of might against terrorism, our performance is about softness, love and romance in the life of Chinese people," Chen said.

Hangzhou Song & Dance Troupe deputy director Cui Wei has directed Misty Rain in Southern China. Cui is also a deputy director of the closing ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

The cultural troupe will also stage two 80-minute shows on August 17-18 in Bishkek to celebrate Chinese culture day in Kyrgyzstan.

This is the third time a cultural gala will be held during an SCO summit. The first two cultural shows were held in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan, in 2005 and in Shanghai last year.

The SCO was set up in 2001 with the aim of fighting the three evil forces of terrorism, separatism and extremism. Now it has expanded its cooperation in other fields such as economy, culture, science and education.

The Shanghai Declaration adopted by SCO member states last year says diversity of cultures must be respected and exchanges among civilizations should be conducted on terms of equality to draw on each other's strengths and facilitate harmonious development.

SCO member states have a long tradition of and bright future for cultural cooperation.

As the SCO gains importance worldwide, the member states are calling for more cultural cooperation to bring the one-fourth of the world's population closer.

Under other SCO projects, artists from Russia and Central Asian countries have given a series of performances in China, and more and more people in these countries have started learning the Chinese language and studying about culture.

China has organized a series of cultural festivals in SCO member countries and will help set up a Confucius Institute in Kyrgyzstan so that people in Central Asia can understand Chinese culture better.