A Chinese dancer and eight humanoid robots from Unitree Robotics have brought a centuries-old Chinese dance tradition to the stage of America’s Got Talent, performing a synchronized shuixiu, or “water-sleeve,” routine during the Season 21 finale.

The performance by 27-year-old Sichuan dancer Wu Yufei and the Unitree G1 robots combined traditional Chinese movement with humanoid robotics, giving American television audiences an unusual meeting of classical performance and modern machines.

The group had already become one of the season’s most recognizable technology-focused acts before reaching the finale.

Wu and eight Unitree G1 humanoids first appeared on America’s Got Talent during the June 2 auditions. Their tightly synchronized routine included dance, martial-arts movements and coordinated backflips, earning all four judges’ approval and sending the act through to the next stage.

The robots returned during the competition before advancing to the September 22 finale. Reporting from Chinese media described the latest performance as a water-sleeve dance, incorporating the long, flowing sleeves associated with Chinese traditional theater and dance.

The act performed under the name Homies, with Wu serving as the human dancer alongside the robot performers. Chinese reporting said Unitree chief marketing officer Wang Qixin described the group as the first Chinese team to reach the America’s Got Talent finale.

The finale performance also builds on a longer effort to make humanoid robots capable of performing complicated choreography alongside humans.

Getting a humanoid robot to reproduce a dance routine requires considerably more than simply telling it to imitate a human. According to reporting by AFP , the process involves capturing detailed human movements , simulating them on computers and transferring the resulting motion data to the robots.

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