Cairo Opera Ballet Company performs at Expo Dubai 2020.

Jamil Khan, Senior Reporter

Dubai always surprised the world with its fast-paced growth in every sector and the latest addition to its cap is the Expo 2020.

The leadership of UAE is highly admirable to giving its people top priority and making everything possible to be a great forefront in the world.

This was stated by prominent Egyptian ballet dancers, Ahmed Yehia and wife Anja Ahcin.

In an exclusive interview with the Gulf Today on Sunday, Yehia, Egypt’s prominent principal dancer of the Cairo Opera Ballet Company and his wife Ahcin, Principal Dancer at the Premier Ballet Academy, Cairo shared their experience of performing at Expo 2020.

“We together had a performance at Expo 2020 on the occasion of the National Day of Egypt and it was a great experience before extraordinary audience.

“The event was organised by Ministry of Culture, Egypt to coincide with country’s national day and also attended by our Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and other officials,” he said.

“The organisers at the Expo 2020 did a great job to set up world-class stage and provided whatever we needed to enthrall the global audience at the global event. It was a great experience for both of us to perform in front of house-packed venue,” he said.

He had performed three times in the past along with a local academy which is running by one of his friend.

“This was my fourth performance in Dubai but first at any Expo and the support from the audience and the organisers we received was enormous and highly appreciated.” Besides performing at different global events in all over the Europe, the couple are also running a prominent ballet school, Premier Ballet Academy in Cairo with around 400 students.

“We have a world-class academy and most of our students are Egyptians as the support from the local community is growing with every passing day because more and more people have the awareness on our art. We have a number of European teachers at our academy training the students with all forms of ballet including classic, neo-classic and contemporary ballet to students aged between 3-years to 18-years,” said Ahcin.

Responding a question, Yehia said that “the UAE has a unique diaspora of people from all over the world and more educated on different fields of arts. The multicultural community is a perfect place and have opportunity to set up a global ballet academy.