Hull dancer told she'd 'never walk again' after spinal surgery now CEO of top dance company

A Hull dancer has won a Lifetime Achievement Award after 30 years at the helm of her award-winning dance school which performed at the O2 Arena this year.

Sara Jayne Ireland opened SJ Arts Dance and Theatre School on March 6, 1994, when she was just 22 years old and now has more than 200 students across Hull, Willerby, Cottingham and Market Weighton. This is in spite of her personal health battle, having been told by doctors age 15 she needed spine surgery and might never walk again, let alone dance.

As a result of the surgery, Sara lost her scholarship for the prestigious Laine Theatre Arts school whose alumni include Victoria Beckham and Warwick Davis. While friends were getting spots in West End Shows, Sara was recovering in Castle Hill Hospital for over a year before learning how to walk again.

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But her hard work has led to great achievements, such as SJ Arts' performance at the O2 Academy in London on November 17 for the National Entertainment Awards. Sara said: "There was about 100 of us who all travelled down on a coach trip to London and just had the most amazing experience.

"It was a three-and-a-half minute piece and we decided to go with an Alice and Wonderland theme which brought a team spirit together and allowed every individual to have a special moment within that production, which is what we are all about. So even if a performer had the Alice role or someone was the Mad Hatter, there were other mini Mat Hatters at the party and other aspects of Alice and the rabbit down the hole."

Sara believes her passion in giving every individual child a chance to shine is due to her own experience of having her dreams crushed as teenager. "My backstory is when I was 15 I had a major spinal operation and I had a scholarship to go to Laine Theatre Arts which was very quickly gone because I was told I was never going to walk again.

"When I was told that by the specialist it was extremely shocking but I just remember telling him, 'Yes but I will just go to class this week and then we will see what happens from there'. And he was telling me, 'But that's the thing, you can't at the moment. You need to take time out.'

"I literally had a competition I was doing that particular weekend and I thought, 'I'll still do it'. I won it and I was tap champion. Then, after that, I thought 'I need to hit reality' and I spent over a year in Castle Hill recovering at a time when you didn't have physiotherapy or the mental health and wellbeing.

"For me, I was in hospital all that time and I ended up in a pot plaster cast which weighed nearly two stone and from that, with further progress, I had to learn how to walk because I'd been lain flat for well over a year. That helped me as a person to develop the school because I realised, within a dance and theatre school, elitism cannot exist.

"I came from a school where it was absolutely amazing, but sometimes it was about elitism. Everybody should have the same opportunities. I was thrown into a position where one minute I was going to an absolutely outstanding theatre school and then being told I was never going to be able to walk again.

"Our ethos is to give students support and that guidance and tell them anything is possible. Imagine you are nine years old and telling your school friends 'I am performing at the 02 next week', how incredible is that? It's insane."