Dozens of New York students from the National Dance Institute perform traditional Chinese dances - including the lion dance and yangko - at the 2016 Happy Chinese New Year Fantastic Art China at New York City's Javits Center on Monday, Chinese New Year's Day. It's the first year that the Chinese New Year's Day is an official holiday for public school.LONG YIFAN/ FOR CHINA DAILY

More than 1.1 million public elementary and high school students took their first-ever Chinese New Year’s Day off for the Year of the Monkey, thanks to years of effort by Chinese Americans to have it declared an official school holiday.

Dozens of young student dancers celebrated the holiday by presenting a performance featuring a lion dance, yangko dance and ribbon spin dance at Student Day at the 2016 Happy Chinese New Year Fantastic Art China event at New York’s Javits Center on Monday.

Natasha Marshall, a 10-year-old dancer in the performance, said she at first considered Chinese New Year’s Day just a day off but now she had learned about some of the interesting cultural aspects of the holiday.

Yuan Jing, program coordinator of the event, said all of the students had a special enthusiasm for Chinese dance and spent several months practicing for the performance.

Yuan said most of the students were aged from 8 to 12 and all were from local public schools that had high proportions of Asian students.

Adam Wickham, a student at Stuyvesant High School, worked as a volunteer at the event.

He said working as a volunteer there was a good way to learn about Chinese Spring Festival customs.

Wickham was not alone. According to event organizers, at least 30 high students worked as volunteers.

Kaia Waxenberg, also a student from Stuyvesant High School, told China Daily that her understanding of China had been enhanced by the event.

Waxenberg said she found the young students’ performance exciting and made her want to learn more about Chinese culture.

“Now we will have a more direct concept of Chinese New Year because everyone will get the day off,” she said.

Barbara Pollack, a contemporary art critic, said the style of the young non-Chinese dancers who performed in the event brought more vitality to the relatively stagnant stereotype of Chinese culture and gave New Yorkers a brand new impression of Chinese dance arts.

“There are many stereotypes about China, most of which are negative,” she said. “Student Day on Chinese New Year’s Day can bring something different and positive.”

According to the US Census Bureau, there were approximately 573,388 Chinese people in the New York City in 2014, making up almost 7 percent of the population.

Margaret Chin, councilwoman of New York who spearheaded the campaign to make Chinese New Year’s Day an official holiday, said 2016 would be a breakthrough year for Chinese Americans’ cultural heritage.

“Chinese people have won more social recognition in mainstream US society,” Chin said. “The festival has been expanded to a wider range, from eastern Asian-only to everyone.”

Zhang Qiyue, Chinese consul general in New York, said she would like to see more states and cities “follow the lead of New York” and make Chinese New Year a more generally observed holiday for all people and communities.

Long Yifan in New York contributed to the story.