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Ann Khalid did not feel well but she insisted on dancing a brief scene from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake with her classmates. The 12-year-old is determined to one day have a career dancing and teaching ballet, not an easy path in a country torn for years by conflict.

"My school and my church are the two things I love the most in Baghdad," the soft-spoken Khalid, in her black leotard and white ballet shoes, said with pride after the dance.

If she has a shot at her dream, it's because of the Baghdad School of Music and Ballet.

The school has managed to survive decades of turmoil, a feat that speaks to the resilience of Baghdad's residents through war after war. The Iraqi capital's past as a Middle East center of culture is a distant memory, but the school has carved out a tiny island of creativity amid the violence that is an inescapable part of daily life and the religious conservatism that now defines public life.

"Where else in Iraq can you walk into a school and listen to a small boy playing Antonio Vivaldi on his violin?" boasts the school principal, Ahmed Salim Ghani, himself a virtuoso player of the contrabass and the oud, an Arab instrument resembling the lute.

Another rarity: It isn't segregated by sex like almost all Iraqi schools. Male and female students take classes together from kindergarten to high school.

"The second you walk through the gate, you find yourself in a different world, one of art and culture," Ghani said.

Ghani proudly declares himself a "genuine" Baghdadi. He speaks nostalgically about Baghdad's golden age ? the 1960s through to the 1980s. Back then, the city's elite patronized art and culture, while deeply secular, albeit dictatorial, regimes ensured that enough of the nation's petrodollars went to the arts. The school, founded in 1968, thrived.

Black-and-white footage of a 1977 school production of The Nutcracker shows a relatively high level of discipline, with the children dancing in professional-level costumes. In class photos from the era, the schoolgirls and female teachers wear miniskirts. The boys wear blazers and bow ties.

Things rapidly worsened for Baghdad and the school with Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. U.N. sanctions devastated the economy, ruptured the nation's social fabric and forced hundreds of thousands to leave their homes in rural areas. They descended on the city to find work, bringing with them the conservative traditions of their villages.

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Iraq: Ballet School Speaks to City's Resilience