A gifted young Middlesbrough ballerina is celebrating after being accepted into the prestigious Royal Ballet School.
Coulby Newham youngster Maddie de Andrade, 10, will be heading off to the London-based boarding school, which is known as one of the world’s leading centres for classical ballet training, in September.
Maddie, currently a pupil at Rose Wood Primary School in Coulby Newham, will stay at the school during term-time, and hopes to make it into the Royal Ballet company at the end of her training aged 18.
She will study there full-time, with four hours of ballet and four hours of academic lessons each day.
Maddie’s mum Pamela, 47, said: “She’s absolutely ecstatic. We found out on Monday and she hasn’t stopped smiling since.
“There were only 12 places for girls and thousands of applicants from all over, including Italy and France, so she’s done really well.”
Maddie has trained with the Thompson School of Ballet in Great Ayton since the age of three, and has parents who have both studied ballet.
Dad Daniel, 50, teaches at the Leeds-based Northern Ballet, and sister Ellise, 14, a student at King’s Academy, is also a ballet dancer.
Pamela said Maddie, who also has three brothers, Dale, 25, Lewis, 23 and 20-year-old Kieran, is looking forward to the challenge of being away from her family.
She said: “I am worried, but she’s doing what she wants to do. We can’t move as we have other children. In the first term there are no weekend classes so she could come home every Friday and stay until Sunday night, and after that she can come home every three weeks if she wants to. I don’t think she’ll be homesick - she’ll be enjoying herself too much.
“It’s been her dream since she was three. She’s really focused and determined.”
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