“I would never have thought of ballet or contemporary. I had no idea what this ‘ballet stuff’ was,” says Iestyn James, 17.
He became involved with dance clubs after school and set his sights on becoming a professional street dancer.
A full-time BTEC in dance with Rubicon Dance introduced Iestyn, from Cardiff, to new styles of dance.
It comes as AMs have said big arts bodies given public funds should be more accessible to people in poverty.
Organisations labelling people as “hard to reach” were “not trying hard enough”, Rubicon Dance told an assembly inquiry.