HEXHAM’S Affleck Academy of Ballet is a beacon of light in a landscape where home-grown talent is otherwise being suffocated by the lack of opportunity at a national level.

Founder and director Hilda Affleck has been nurturing budding Tynedale dancers for the past 25 years and as she marks the milestone with a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she has taken pause to reflect.

Over the years, she has had students get into the Bolshoi in Moscow, both the Alberta and the Royal Winnipeg in Canada and the Washington Ballet in America, and she is proud of the success of her proteges.

But it is getting harder every year, she says, with British ballet companies seemingly determined to overlook their own. The very reason some of her students had gone abroad was because, well, there hadn’t been much choice.

The English National Ballet, for example, is a 300-strong company, but only 20 of them are British, she said. “The artistic director, Tamara Rojo, has been asking for more Arts Council funding. Someone wrote in to say maybe if she employed more British dancers there would be a willingness to provide more funds.”

The national situation is a problem for the Affleck Academy, one of the few schools left in England operating at the level it is. Hilda said: “Ninety per cent of the intake to our big ballet companies are foreign students, mainly from Eastern Europe or Japan.

“There is this perception that British dancers are lazy and don’t have the same work ethic as, say, the Japanese, but I can guarantee my students aren’t! My vocational students get up at 5.30am to practise before school and have lessons with me six days a week.

“We have to fight this image that foreign dancers are more driven.”

She had been particularly delighted with the acceptance in recent times of three of her students to the prestigious Tring Park School of Performing Arts in Hertfordshire, including Charlotte Holmes, who had just completed her first year.

Then there are the success of current student Gabby Guest, who has won one of only two scholarships on offer this year for the UK Ballet Company. And Hilda is now preparing three students for next year’s top auditions.

“I love what I do,” she said. “It’s really nice to be able to give these young people an opportunity to make their dreams come true.

“When I see them moving on to the professional companies it is very satisfying.”

They include James Henson, who has gained two scholarships and has ultimately graduated from the Central School of Ballet; Ian Burdon, who has joined the K Ballet in Tokyo and settled in the city after marrying a Japanese fashion designer; Sarah Davidson, who went through the Central School of Ballet before joining a contemporary dance company; and Julia Burton Roberts, who had won a scholarship for the London Studio Centre.

Hilda herself – or ‘Miss Affleck’ as she is known to her students – trained with the Royal Ballet. She returned to the North-East in 1978 to set up her own training academy, initially in Tynemouth and then Springwell Village, near Washington, where she still has her main studio.

In 1980, she became the youngest examiner ever appointed by the Royal Academy of Dancing and as such, travelled Europe and South-East Asia giving lectures and workshops on top of examining students.

She set up the Hexham branch of her academy after being approached by parents who had seen some of her students performing. It opened in 1992 at the Wentworth Leisure Centre, where it has continued to meet ever since on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings.

She said: “I took some of my Tynemouth girls to perform at the first show we did in Hexham and I remember it well, because I was pregnant at the time with my son and he’s just coming up 24 now.

“The academy in Hexham took off very well, mainly because the parents responded so favourably. They have always been very supportive – they get behind productions by fundraising to pay for the costumes and props.”

The performances of this summer’s production, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, will take place on the evenings of Friday, July 17, and Saturday, July 18, at the Wentworth Centre. Tickets can be purchased at the reception desk.

“We have some ambitious students in this production and it’s a wonderful showcase for them,” said Hilda.

“It also gives the younger ones the chance to see the older girls doing all their point work and looking beautiful. The shows are always buzzing with excitement and adrenaline.”