Leaps and bounds: ex principal dancer uses ballet to transform young lives in Leeds

Children at Little London community primary have been lining up in their school hall twice a week to practise with Martin Howland. Photograph: Project Resurgence

It is commonly thought of as one of the most elite forms of dance, using a dizzying mass of French vocabulary, and originally having been developed to be performed in the courts of European kings and queens.

But access to ballet training need not be only for children whose parents can afford it, according to the former Royal Ballet principal dancer, Martin Howland, who is giving a year’s worth of free lessons to primary school pupils in one of the poorest areas of Leeds.