A Kurdish woman, Robar Ahmad, a graduate of the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad, waited 17 years to open a ballet school in Kurdistan early this year.
The school teaches ballet and performs in public. The students, aged 7-15, include both boys and girls.
This is the first school of its kind in a conservative society where honor killings are still quite common.
According to a report issued by the Institute for War and Peace in the U.S., the use of Arabic as a spoken language in the Kurdish provinces is on the decline.
[People familiar with the situation in Kurdistan say that the teaching of the Arabic language in most Kurdish school comes third, after Kurdish and English.]
Sources: Al-Rafidyan, September 30, 2009; Akhbar al-Khaleej, Bahrain, October 1, 2009
