A Kilmarnock mum has spoken of her pride after her daughter was accepted into Scotland's national dance school.
Ellie Young is set to combine her secondary school studies with dancing after getting a place at Dance School of Scotland in Glasgow.
The 11-year-old will move to Knightswood Secondary School's residency alongside all of the other dance and musical theatre students in August 2023, where she will board from Monday to Friday and will come home at weekends.
The course is designed to nurture, develop and maximise the dance potential of each individual pupil, providing them with the versatility and skills necessary for today's professional dancer.
Rebecca Hill, Ellie's mum, told Ayrshire Live: "Everyone is super proud of Ellie and excited to follow her journey with the dance school of Scotland. I am one very proud mum and I am happy that Ellie is happy. She is going to do what she loves the most whilst being at secondary school. We are very grateful for this amazing opportunity.
"Ellie is super excited and has not looked back. She has met all of the boys and girls in her year group and made some lovely friendships already. The children are a lovely bunch and have started to bond with one another at their transition days, sleepover bump-up days and having their own group chat.
"Luckily, she also had some familiar faces from her junior associate's programme at the Hamilton theatre arts college and the royal conservatoire who successfully auditioned for her new dance school."
She continued: "We will all miss her but she will be home at weekends. My family are looking forward to her performing her annual summer show at the theatre royal in Glasgow.
"As long as Ellie passes her annual assessments and is progressing with her academic work then she can continue throughout her secondary school up until 6th year at the Dance School of Scotland."
Ellie started off dancing from the age of three in a local school in Galston and then moved a year later to start her ballet journey at Dansarena Studios in Ayr.
Since being at Dansarena, she began to fill her evening timetable dancing six days a week leading to her moving the school to Ayr Grammar Primary which is next door to Dansarena so that she could make her dancing every evening on time.
Rebecca said: "Ellie has loved dancing from day one. She always puts 100 per cent into her dances and would choose dancing before anything. You could see from a very young age that she was taking it seriously, she was just a natural from day one."
Throughout the summer of 2022, Ellie attended summer dance workshops at Hamilton Theatre Arts College which successfully resulted in auditioning for the Hamilton theatre arts junior associates programme on a Wednesday evening which developed her confidence in the musical theatre side of dance, acting through song and jazz performance.
Later that summer, Ellie successfully auditioned for the Snow White pantomime at the Palace Theatre in Kilmarnock and was part of the junior ensemble. She completed 21 shows over the Christmas period.
Ellie decided to apply for the Dance School of Scotland in January this year and received an invite to audition a month later.
She was then recalled for a second audition and medical before being successful and was offered a place for S1 entry.
Ellie will start her studies at Knightswood Secondary School this August, with tuition fees being fully funded by the Scottish Government for young people residing in Scotland.
She will have access to art facilities, including six fully equipped dance studios. There will be specialist training daily, with classes focusing on different genres such as ballet, modern, jazz tap, national and contemporary .
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