A dance school grabbed silver and bronze in their first-ever international competition at the postponed Dance World Cup 2020.

The Bernadine Soul School for Dance in Didcot has been teaching dance for 30 years, but this was the school’s first international competition.

It teaches ballet, tap and jazz and competed with an acrobatic dance routine which involved flips, contortion and gymnastic elements.

They were the only dance school in Oxfordshire to represent Team England in the Dance World Cup 2020, and to get second and third place in the world with their entries.

The school is run by Natalie Soul, vice-principal, and her mother and principal Bernadine Soul.

Bernadine said: "We are absolutely over the moon it is really good for the community of Didcot. The girls worked really hard and have had loads of support."

The acrobatic dancers represented Team England on August 10 in Telford, Shropshire with a routine called 'Kashmir' performed by the school's junior group. The dancers came second in the world, receiving silver medals.

A small senior group of dancers represented Team England with a routine called 'Palladio' where they came first in their category and received bronze medals, putting them in third place in the world.

The Didcot dancers qualified for the Dance World Cup 2020 in 2019, which was originally supposed to take place in Rome in June 2020.

The team set up a crowd funding page to raise money for flights, accommodation and kit. The team was willing to perform for any events for fundraising and offered sponsorship for the team England kit.

But the pandemic meant the Dance World Cup 2020 in Rome was cancelled only to be rescheduled in Spain and cancelled again. Finally, the world cup was able to go ahead in Telford, Shropshire where both 2020 and 2021 events took place.

The fundraiser still helped the dance school get kitted out in spectacular specially designed outfits.

Ms Soul said: "Their costumes were amazing, we had them made and designed specially and they looked stunning."

The dance school sent off an entry video in 2019 with no expectations of making it to the world cup and have now walked away with silver and bronze medals.

Vice principal Miss Soul said: "It is absolutely amazing. We didn’t tell the kids when we sent off the video, but when we told the kids they were over the moon.

"We are extremely proud. We just thought we would submit a video to see if we would successful and I was over the moon when we were asked to represent Team England."