Five-year-old Alice Watts has defied her disability to become a winning dancer.

With her left side weakened by cerebral palsy, her physiotherapist suggested she took up dancing at the age of 30 months.

Mum Jill says: "She can only walk very small distances and uses a buggy wheelchair because she's very small for her age."

But after an operation to stretch her ligament and having one of her tap shoes raised, Alice, a pupil at Stanbury Primary School, who lives in Hebden Road, Haworth, has gained a great deal of strength from dance.

She attends the Victoria Stansfield School of Dance, at Wakefield, and has entered several competitions.

This week she was entered in a higher age category and beat off eight-year-old rivals and stunned judges to come third in a dance festival at Penistone.

Filling in an entry form for tap, ballet, character and song and dance, the rules forbid Jill from mentioning her daughter's disability. So Alice was judged on merit alone.

Jill says Alice will keep entering competitions for as long as possible.

"She loves the excitement and dressing up," she adds.