BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Leslie Harris has spent years behind bars in Louisiana, serving time for armed robbery, missing out on key moments in his daughter’s life. With his release still years away, he likely won’t see her prom, graduation, or possibly even her wedding.

However, Harris seized a rare opportunity to create a special memory with his 17-year-old daughter during a unique event at Louisiana’s largest maximum-security prison. Dressed in a tailored tuxedo and holding a bouquet of roses, he reunited with her at the facility’s inaugural father-daughter dance. They shared an emotional moment dancing to Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” at the pink-themed celebration, which gained significant attention on social media.

“Seeing her in a dress, crying and rushing towards me was overwhelming,” Harris shared during a phone interview from the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where he has nine more years to serve. “It reminded me of all the moments I’ve missed in her life.”

This penitentiary joins other U.S. facilities in hosting daddy-daughter dances, including one in Washington D.C. featured in the Netflix documentary “Daughters” last year. According to prison officials, this event could become a new tradition at the Angola facility, known for its annual October prison rodeo. Housing over 6,300 inmates, including several on death row, the prison is situated on grounds that recently transitioned part of its space into an immigration detention center.

Assistant Warden Anne-Marie Easley expressed hope that the dance might provide a glimmer of hope in a place where many face long or life sentences. For some men, it was a long-awaited reunion with their daughters, offering a chance to mend relationships and heal. For others, it was an evening where they were seen not as inmates, but as fathers.

The prison picked nearly 30 inmates to participate due to good behavior, among other factors. Videos posted from the event showed fathers in tuxedos — complete with pink boutonnieres — breaking down in tears as their daughters ran up to them in sparkly dresses, shrieking with excitement. They reunited in the middle of a pink carpet overlayed with petals, with breezy drapes hanging overhead. A dance space was setup in the prison’s Bible college.

The dance was put on by God Behind Bars, which hosts other reunification events and religious services in prisons nationwide. In videos the group posted before the dance, some prisoners said they wanted to apologize for all the years they missed. Others called the dance the most important prison visit of their lives.

The night included the men surprising their daughters with a line dance after weeks of practice. For Harris, the best part was when he and his daughter slow danced to ‘Butterfly Kisses,’ a song about a dad’s unconditional love for his daughter.

In that moment, Harris said memories rushed back of life before prison, when his daughter was just 2 years old. How she would sleep on his chest, play with his hair and how he would buy her little dresses. Before the night was over, he gave her a Bible with passages he highlighted.

“That’s really the heart of it at the end of the day,” said Jake Bodine, founder of God Behind Bars. “Show these individuals who is counting on them and once they realize the weight of that, they will hold themselves accountable for change.”