As the music begins, dark and foreboding, Ayman Saffah huddles over, oblivious to his fellow students. Then it swells and he stretches, his thin frame twisting and reaching, his face the picture of concentration.

A young Palestinian-Israeli, as he prefers to be known, from a small village in Galilee, Ayman’s story is almost that of a Billy Elliot in the Middle East.

He was transfixed by ballet on television as a boy and would dance secretly in his room at night, imitating films and downloading videos from the internet to learn more.

Young men in traditional Arab Muslim villages do not dance ballet. So Ayman’s path to the preparatory school for Israel’s prestigious Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company has been cloaked in secrecy and struggle.

“I always wanted to dance,” said Ayman, a 17-year-old in jeans and trainers, a pair of sunglasses dangling at his neck. “[But] when I saw it on the TV or internet, I saw many, many girls dance, but I never saw boys. So I thought I couldn’t do it.”

Instead, for years Ayman contented himself with learning the debka, a traditional folk dance, in his nearby village of Kafr Yassif.

After classes he would wait outside, peering through the window at the girls’ ballet class to see what poses they learnt, then rushing home to try them himself.

At 14 he mustered the courage to ask his mother for money to buy his first pair of simple black ballet shoes. “The salesman asked me, ‘Who are you buying these shoes for?’. And I told him they were for me. He was wondering why I would do that — to him it was unusual,” Ayman said.

A year later he enrolled in the village ballet class and soon found himself confessing his dreams to his father, whose bewilderment was quickly replaced by love and pride.

“As far as this thing does no harm to him or to others he can do what he likes. He loves what he’s doing, I cannot stop him from doing it,” his father, Khaled Hashem Saffah, said.

His friends were not so forgiving. Mocked by classmates who said ballet was for girls and sissies, Ayman lasted only four months in the class. “I thought, it’s not easy to give up on my friends, so I gave up on the ballet. I wanted to have my friends back. But after I went back to my friends it was very hard for me not to practise and not to dance in my room,” he said.

Soon his talent got the better of him: a few months later he agreed to be a former dancemate’s partner in a May Day concert, where he was spotted by a local dance troupe leader who coaxed him to join.

He was recruited by the Kibbutz Gaaton school in northern Israel a short time later and here, after a year of study, he has found acceptance. As he speaks, his passing classmates — all girls — squeal when they see him with a reporter, and welcome him with hugs and cheek kisses.

“With hard work he can succeed,” said Yehudit Arnon, the 81-year-old founder of the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company and its preparatory school. She swore she would devote her life to dance after nearly perishing at Auschwitz for refusing to dance for Nazi officers at a Christmas party.

She said: “When I feel somebody is really an artist, we can help him. He has to bring that from inside. But when I saw Ayman, I thought here we can help.”

Five nights a week, Ayman finishes high school and rushes to the kibbutz for just under five hours of classes in classical ballet and contemporary dance. His father, a taxi driver, concedes that financing his son’s studies has been difficult, and he has two more years of study before he can hope to join the dance company.

“But if this is what Ayman wants I will support him with all that I’ve got,” Mr Saffah said. “I am proud of Ayman.” Ayman dreams of performing on stages across Israel and around the world. But more than that, he dreams of returning to his village a success.

“I would like to be famous. I would like to be the first Palestinian Arab ballet dancer,” he said. “My dream is to finish my education then to open my own dance studio to teach classes for men and boys.”

Dancing boys

— The character of Billy Elliot is based loosely on Philip Marsden, a Royal Ballet dancer who was born into a politically active mining family in the North of England

— Jamie Bell, the actor who portrayed Billy in the film, had taken ballet lessons since the age of 6. Like the character he played, his first encounter with dance was watching a girls' class and copying their steps.

— Bell also kept his dancing a secret from school friends, who teased him. Unlike the fictional Elliot's family, Bell's was familiar with dance and they supported his ambition

— The life of one of the first leads in the West End musical of Billy Elliot also echoed that of the character. Liam Mower, a pipe-fitter's son, left Hull, aged 12, on a scholarship to the Royal Ballet School. His father had hoped he would become a rugby player

Sources: www.imdb.com; Times archives

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