Valletta teen scores €30k scholarship to study dance in London, inspiring island-wide arts surge

Valletta-born 19-year-old Elisa Zammit always knew the polished floorboards of London’s Trinity Laban Conservatoire were meant for her feet; she just never imagined the money would appear fast enough. Last week, the rising contemporary dancer became the first Maltese recipient of the €30,000 “Mediterranean Arts Bridge” scholarship, a new fund set up by the Malta Arts Fund and the Lombard Bank to stop talent from draining away to bigger cities for lack of cash.

“I still pinch myself,” Zammit told HOT Malta, clutching the acceptance letter she received while waiting for the Number 13 bus outside City Gate. “For a Valletta girl who started pirouettes on the limestone steps of Strait Street, this feels like the whole island is lifting me up.”

The scholarship, launched in February, covers three years of tuition, accommodation and living costs at any top-25 global performing-arts school. Zammit auditioned against 112 applicants, performing a self-choreographed piece inspired by the traditional Maltese ġilwa wedding dance. Judges praised her “fierce Mediterranean identity” and the way she fused folk rhythms with the fluid release-technique favoured in European contemporary companies.

Culture Minister Owen Bonnici hailed the award as proof that Malta’s €15 million post-COVID arts-recovery package is “not just numbers on a spreadsheet”. Speaking at a press conference inside the new MUŻA wing, he said: “We lose too many creatives because they think you have to leave to level up. Elisa shows you can stay rooted and still reach the canopy.”

Indeed, Zammit’s win lands at a symbolic moment. Only 4.7 % of Maltese students currently enrol in tertiary-level dance programmes, well below the EU average of 11 %. The National Statistics Office attributes the gap to limited local degree options—the University of Malta offers dance only as a minor within the B.Ed.—and the eye-watering €18,000 annual price tag of foreign conservatoires.

Local dance educators say the ripple effect is real. “When kids see someone who caught the same bus to Żeppi’s pastizzeria making it abroad, the studio suddenly feels like a runway instead of a hobby room,” said Joanne Cassar, artistic director of Moveo Dance Collective in Msida, where Zammit trained from age seven. Cassar reports a 40 % spike in trial classes since the scholarship announcement, with parents asking about “that London school thing”.

Zammit plans to return each summer to run free workshops in community centres from Għarb to Għaxaq. “Contemporary dance can feel elitist,” she admitted. “But if we hold sessions next to the village band club, suddenly it’s just another festa activity—only instead of playing the marża, you’re learning contact improvisation.”

Her long-term goal is to found Malta’s first full-time touring company that pays dancers a living wage year-round. “We have amazing opera, theatre, even circus,” she said. “But professional contemporary dance? We import it. I want us to export it.”

The economic argument is already winning converts. Tourism Ministry data shows arts-related visits generated €126 million in 2023, and officials see dance as the next niche after the meteoric rise of Mediterranean food festivals. “Cultural tourists stay 2.3 nights longer,” said Carlo Micallef, CEO of the Malta Tourism Authority. “If Elisa headlines a contemporary dance festival here in five years, that’s hotel rooms, restaurants, Air Malta flights—real money.”

Back in Valletta, Zammit’s grandmother, 82-year-old Ġemma, still can’t pronounce “Laban” but has hung the scholarship certificate above the TV. “She tells neighbours her granddaughter got ‘that big London paper’ and will come back to teach ‘the new kunsert’,” Zammit laughed. “That’s the thing about Malta—word travels faster than fibre internet. If one kid starts dancing because Nonna Ġemma bragged at the greengrocer, the scholarship is already working.”

As the sun sets over Grand Harbour, Zammit rehearses one last time on the limestone she’ll soon trade for Thames riverside studios. Her shadow stretches across the same streets that once echoed with British sailors’ jazz and Maltese folk guitars—a living bridge between eras, and, if she has her way, between an island and the world.