A talented young performer from Newham has been selected to join a prestigious national dance company.

Amari Webb-Martin has been trained in tap, jazz, acrobatics, ballet and lyrical dance since the age of four; now 17, he is one of only a few young people around the country to be selected for the National Youth Dance Company (NYDC).

He said: “It has been a lot of work along with going to school but as it’s my passion, it has always compelled me to keep going, to do more and to improve my dance skills.

"Gaining one of the few NYDC places has been one of my proudest achievements.”

The budding talent has also successfully studied dance grades, auditioned for many companies and productions and gained three successful dance places with the London Children’s Ballet company.

He also trained in contemporary and creative dance at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and performed at the Royal Albert Hall, Disneyland Paris, Dominion and Peacock Theatres.

Over the past year, Amari also went to Amsterdam as part of an exchange programme, where he developed contemporary and jazz skills and took up African dance forms.

He has achieved all this alongside his schoolwork, receiving GCSE grades 8s/9s at Kingsford Community School, and taught early years pupils in China as a mandarin student doing a work placement.

Amari is now an A Level student at School 21, but hopes to create a space for young dancers from diverse and less privileged backgrounds in east London in the future.

He said there is not enough diversity in the industry: “I hope in the future, that I will become that dancer, for young black dancers, that I wished I could have looked up to when I was younger.

"The possibility of this, in itself, inspires me as a dancer.”

Amari was interviewed as part of Newham Council’s Year of the Young person – a programme to celebrate the borough's young people.