NORTHERN Ballet has teamed up with Indian restaurant Prashad to develop access to ballet in the district's Asian community.

The scheme will see free ballet workshops run in selected schools, as well as healthy eating advice for the young participants.

The Academy of Northern Ballet, the official school of the internationally acclaimed ballet company, has begun working with Prashad, an Indian vegetarian restaurant in Drighlington, to gain more of an insight into what is important to Asian families.

Together, the Academy and Prashad aim to establish a shared culture through which they can engage with young people and families from more diverse backgrounds. As well as dance tuition, the scheme will offer food education based on Prashad's experience as an award-winning family run restaurant. The workshops, run by both companies, will involve a ballet technique class using the same methods of teaching used by the Northern Ballet Academy to teach its students, including those on its Centre for Advanced Training Programme which trains professional dancers of the future. Prashad will offer guidance on healthy eating and provide recipe cards which children can take home and use to cook healthy recipes with their families.

Catherine Worthington, director of Academy Operations said: "We know that dance is an important part of life for the Asian community but this does not typically include ballet. Working with Prashad will give us the insight we need in order to establish a relationship with people within this community and introduce them to ballet. These workshops will be the first time that most of the students will have been exposed to ballet and along with increasing awareness to the art form, we also hope we will be able to give opportunities to those with undiscovered talent to pursue ballet further with the Academy of Northern Ballet."

The Academy of Northern Ballet is the only recognised Centre for Advanced Training specialising in classical ballet in the UK. Training programmes are offered at professional level and a range of classes at recreational level are available for anyone from the age of 18-months-old.

Nominated for Outstanding Company at the 2015 National Dance Awards, Northern Ballet is one of the UK’s five large ballet companies. Based in Leeds, it performs throughout the UK and overseas, with productions mixing classical dance and theatre, inspired by popular culture, literature, opera, and often giving a new interpretation of popular ballets. The company's production of Wuthering Heights ran at the Alhambra last autumn.

Prashed was established by Mohan and Kaushy Patel in the 1990s, after they converted an old launderette in Great Horton into a deli selling Indian snacks and sweets. It became a thriving family business offering traditional Gujurati and Punjabi vegetarian cuisine. In 2010 it came second on Channel 4 show Ramsay's Best Restaurant, with Gordon Ramsay declaring Prashad's dishes to be the best vegetarian food he'd ever tasted.

* For more information visit northernballet.com