International Competition for Ballet Students begins in Cuba

As part of the XXX International Meeting of Academies for the Teaching of Ballet, the 2025 International Competition for Ballet Students began today at the National Theater of Cuba in this city.

The competition will gather promising young dancers in four categories: small, children, young, and advanced and will be held until Friday 18th in three stages, namely eliminatory, semifinal, and final.

The presentations will take place at the National Theater and at the Fernando Alonso National Ballet School, in front of a jury headed by the school director Dani Miguel Hernandez Acosta, first dancer of the National Ballet of Cuba (BNC).

He will be joined by other relevant figures, including BNC director-general Viengsay Valdés; Dirk Badenhorst, founder of the International Ballet Competition of South Africa; the Cuban prima ballerina Anette Delgado; and Joseph Gatti, director of the United Ballet Theatre & Academy.

The event is intended to both find new talents and celebrate three decades of pedagogical exchange among global academies.

Cuba, the birthplace of one of the world’s most renowned ballet schools, thus reinforces its role as a training hub for classical dance deemed a major space for the formation and updating of dancers and teachers at international level.