Rose Green ballet dancer needs funding support

Jade has been awarded a place at the prestigious Tring Park School for the Performing Arts to start in just three months.

She was selected as one of just 48 potential students at the Hertfordshire boarding school ahead of some 600 hopefuls.

The seven years she could spend there will equip her for a life in one of the most demanding of the performing arts.

Jade, 11, of Pryors Lane, is eager to get the chance. She said: “I feel like dancing is my entire world. Ballet means everything to me.”

But her single mum Lara Standing, 32, has to find £27,000 a year – or £9,100 for every 12-week term – to fund the attendance at Tring Park of the oldest of her two daughters.

She has posted a film of Jade performing on YouTube as one way of raising the funds needed to secure her a place at the school once she leaves Rose Green Junior School. She has also written to an initial 57 charitable organisations to ask for sponsorship.

“I am just hoping a businessman will see the appeal and help us,” she said. “I will go countrywide as well to seek funds if I have to.

“It would be absolutely devastating for Jade to get so far and then be unable to go to Tring Park. She is brilliant as what she does and is an absolute star.”

Jade has been a ballet dancer since she was three. Her devotion to the art sees her practise four times a week at the Art of Dance and Fitness performance school in South Bersted for up to two hours at a time.

“I like it when I dance,” said Jade. “I feel that it’s just me. There’s nothing else around me and I just enjoy it.”

Practice has certainly made her perfect as she is its youngest student to be taking their grade five ballet exams.

She is combining that work with mastering the grade four course, having passed the initial first three grades.

Jade is currently attending the performance school for a fifth session each week to prepare for its biannual show at the Regis Centre in July.

“It’s really fun being in the shows. I just like going out in front of an audience and showing what I can do.

“I get a little bit nervous but not a lot because I’ve done it before,” she said.

Jade has also travelled to Eastleigh in Hampshire every second Saturday to take part in sessions held by the London Royal Ballet which end this weekend.

The skills she has learned enabled her to pass the Tring Park audition with its tests of her barre work and arabesques among other ballet essentials.

She also had to a perform a dance she was taught by her tutor at the Art of Dance and Fitness.

She was, however, unsuccessful in her bid to secure one of the nine scholarships on offer for the 48 students about to start in September.

This has left her dependent on getting external funding for the chance of a lifetime.

More details from [email protected]