SOME of the world’s top ballet dancers arrived in Gwent this week for a summer school led by Wales’ only ballet company based in Newport.

Award-winning Ballet Cymru, hidden away at Wern Industrial Estate in Rogerstone, is the country’s only professional ballet company and was set up 30 years ago by Newport dancer Darius James.

Every year the company holds the Wales International Ballet Summer School and welcomes dance students to spend a week training with some of the world’s top dancers and choreographers.

All week the dancers have undertaken long days of practice at Newport’s Riverfront Theatre, ready for a free performance for the public on Saturday.

Amy Doughty, assistant artistic director at Ballet Cymru, said the week involves “specialist and elite training” for students who have reached a certain level.

The 37 dancers in the advanced class are aged from 18 to 23, although some are younger who the ballet company have identified as talented enough to join the course.

This week they have been taught by Mara Galeazzi, an ex-principal dancer with the Royal Ballet School and Tim Podesta, a top international choreographer.

“Somebody like Mara, she’s just phenomenal,” Amy Doughty said. “She’s worked with all the best choreographers in the world and she’s here with us.

“We usually don’t get artists of this calibre here in Wales so we feel we want to bring people like this here to show what it’s about. We want to try and give as much opportunity as we can to people in Wales.”

Ms Doughty added that the students are “hungry” to learn from the best.

Eighteen-year-old Holly Vallis, from Newport, is one of just two Gwent dancers on the course. “It’s difficult but it’s really good,” she said. “Mentally you have to pick it up very quickly and that’s quite challenging.

“It’s amazing, we are really lucky as there’s not much going on in Wales.”

Ella-Louise Appleby, 17 from Pontypool, is also on the course and added: “It’s so nice to have this on our doorstep, it makes it more personal and it makes it like a family.”

Adam Harris, 23, who started dancing when he was six after his sister was enrolled in ballet classes, has come from Zagreb in Croatia for the course. He said: “We have some really good teachers here and I’m leaning a lot from them. I have learnt new tricks in just a couple of days.

Tim Podesta, the choreographer teaching the students, said: “It’s awesome, so many different dancers coming together.

“But it’s also frustrating as you have been them and now you look back and you’re saying the same things that your teacher said to you, but you wish there was a way to make them relax and enjoy it a lot more. But that’s the way it is, it’s the journey we have to take.”

Mara Galeazzi, the ex-principal dancer at the Royal Ballet School - the highest rank of dancer, said the dancers have improved.

"They were at the beginning very shy and insecure and you have to push them a little bit not to be afraid," she said.

She added: “I think the message to people who have no knowledge of ballet is they don’t have to come and understand the technique of it, they have to come and enjoy watching the hard work and the performances.

“It’s just a physically beautiful art. We’re only two hours away from London and it’s amazing there’s this interest here and it should be pushed.”

The dancers will put on a free performance at the Riverfront on Saturday, August 6 at 2.30pm.