The change MAKERS
Graceful and agile, Kitty Phetla lives and breathes ballet. Quite simply, it’s been an integral part of her life since the age of nine, and her hope is for others to see it the same way, here at home and throughout the continent.
“While ballet has been made more accessible, certainly in the last 10 years, I would like to see the art form being considered as a career possibility. Perhaps South Africans are not as informed that it is a job, and that one can earn a salary from it every month,” she says.
Fortunately, no one is better primed to create and drive such awareness than Kitty, who was named one of the recipients of the prestigious 2019 Standard Bank Young Artists (SBYA) Awards, an accolade she cherishes, alongside her performance in The Dying Swan for former president Nelson Mandela and the Dutch royal family in Amsterdam. “We brought South Africa to Holland and it was incredible!” she recounts.
