YOUNG Isabella Chandler has a real spring in her step after winning a place with the highly prestigious Royal Ballet School Junior Associates.

The ten-year-old dance and drama pupil at Skipton's Northern Dance Centre demonstrated her talent and came through auditions against hundreds of other young ballet dancers in Leeds.

Isabella, who is a pupil at St Stephen's Primary School in Skipton, also recently gained a distinction in her grade four ballet examinations with an impressive 93 per cent mark, as well as getting a place at the Yorkshire Ballet Summer School in York.

Northern Dance Centre principal, Amy Addison, said: "Isabella is a calm, sweet-natured little girl, who thoroughly deserves all this success as she works so hard in all her classes!"

The Royal Ballet School in London is renowned as one of the world's best centres of classical ballet training, and has among its former pupils Darcey Bussell and Dame Margot Fonteyn.