Ballet high: Barnsley dancer graduates from the Bolshoi

Tala Lee Turton, 20, joined the Moscow-based school when she was 16, and received sponsorship to help pay the £15,000-a-year fee.

After four years of intensive training with the Bolshoi Academy, Miss Turton said the graduation ceremony was one of her proudest moments.

Before heading to Moscow, she had spent five years as a boarder at Tring Park School for the Performing Arts in Hertfordshire, after winning a coveted Music and Dance Scheme scholarship.

But she never forgot her Yorkshire roots, and deliberately kept her Barnsley accent - though her time with the Bolshoi required her to learn Russian as she continued the rest of her academic studies.

Miss Turton, whose family is from Wombwell, is only the ninth British dancer ever to have been offered a place at the ballet company since it was founded in 1776.