Nine-year-old Lucy wins a role in The Nutcracker

A nine-year-old who learns ballet in a church hall is set to dance on the stage of the London Coliseum after winning a national competition.

Lucy Wood will start rehearsing with the English National Ballet within weeks, after she caught the eye of its artistic director Wayne Eagling when he judged last year's Angelina Ballerina Children's National Dance Award.

He was part of a panel who unanimously picked Lucy, who has been dancing with the Susan Robinson School of Ballet in her home town of West Byfleet, Surrey, since she was two.

She will train for the role of Clara in The Nutcracker by shadowing an older dancer with the aim of performing with the ballet company in a year's time.

Lucy said: "I love to dance more than anything else. It really happens naturally." It was her dance teacher's idea to enter the competition, set up by the managers of the Angelina Ballerina brand, HIT Entertainment.

"I was really surprised to win because it was a national competition and out of everyone in the country who entered I was top. It's really exciting."

Lucy, who has lessons five times a week, has two sisters and two brothers, aged 11 to three, who all dance. Her mother, Melissa - a music teacher married to Robert, a builder - said dancing with the national ballet would be fantastic experience: "She wants to be a dancer so it will be a good lesson in what it's like."

Angela Rippon, another of last year's judges, called Lucy "exceptional".

Writer Katharine Holabird, who created the Angelina Ballerina character, said she had just "wowed us all".

The 15 finalists for this year's honour were judged yesterday. Tianna Marie Carter, 10, from Newcastle won for what Ms Holabird called her "tremendous energy and charm".