Next academic year, 2021/2022, the dance studios at the Catalina Bufí Conservatory of Ibiza and Formentera will host dance classes not only for the four levels of elementary education but also the first level of professional ballet studies. After studying its feasibility and conducting entrance examinations with students of the Pitiusas, the Balearic Ministry of Education and Professional Training announced yesterday that this year it will launch professional dance classes at the Ibiza centre. “We have evaluated, on the one hand, the request of the Ibiza Conservatory itself and, on the other, the existing demand on the island”, said the general director of Planning, Management and Centres, Antoni Morante. As he explained, the introduction of these studies will be gradual, starting with the first year of the classical dance speciality, begnning at the end of September. The fourteen students who have passed the entrance exams, held on June 21st, will attend the classes. All of them studied their fourth year of elementary education at the Ibiza Conservatory, according to the head of dance studies, Mabel Ribas, who also works as a ballet teacher at the centre. “As an Ibizan, it gives me immense joy to have managed to bring these artistic studies to the island because I myself, like my colleagues from the dance department, had to leave Ibiza to be able to dance and continue with our own studies,” she said.
The introduction of professional dance studios has been a gradual process that began three years ago, in the 2018/2019 academic year, with the launch at the Ibiza Conservatory of the initial courses with 40 students divided into two first year groups and one second year group of elementary dance education.