Bradford College student, 16, lands dream ballet degree place

A talented dancer from Bradford College has won a place at one of Europe’s most prestigious dance schools.

Mika George Evans is poised to start a degree course in ballet at the prestigious Royal Conservatoire of Scotland at just 16 years of age.

The teenager will move to Glasgow this summer to study for a BA in Modern Ballet at the world-famous institution and take a step closer to fulfilling her ambition of becoming a professional ballet dancer. 

Mika, who lives in Birstall, started dancing before her third birthday when still in her native New Zealand where she was home educated. She spent two years with the New Zealand School of Dance Scholars programme in Wellington before, when she was 12, her family relocated to the UK. 

After settling in Yorkshire she continued her ballet training by gaining a place at Northern Ballet’s Centre for Advanced Training in Leeds where she has been training intensively for the last four years and, for the past year, she has combined this with studying for a Level 2 Performing ArtsDiploma at Bradford College as well as GCSEs in Maths and English.

Mika believes the college course helped her ahead of her auditions this year for some of the world’s leading dance schools.

“The Performing Arts course has been really good for confidence building,” she said.

“Before I came to Bradford College I was so shy that I hardly talked to anybody. At college I really started to open up. I feel I have grown in confidence and matured a lot.

“I got to study not just dance but acting and singing and learn more about other kinds of performing arts.

“It was a great decision coming to college, I have really enjoyed it and benefited from it.”

With her new new-found confidence the teen is not daunted by the prospect of moving away from home a couple of years earlier than her contemporaries are likely to head to university.

“In ballet you have to start your training early as your career is coming to an end in your 30s,” she said.

“I am just excited by the opportunity. I had offers closer to home but thought Scotland was a more exciting move.”

Photo taken by Dominique Stephenson, Bradford College photography student