Vidya Cannonier-Watson was one of a handful of dancers picked to choreograph a piece for the sixth form show at Tring Park School.

The 16-year-old also shone in the three pieces she danced in at the production by “the leading performing arts and academic school” in Britain.

Just three days before that the young dancer received two Vocational Classical Ballet Awards from Cecchetti Society Trust. The awards are open to students of the Cecchetti method. Enrico Cecchetti was “widely accepted as the greatest ballet virtuoso in the world” in 1888.

Having received the $7,500 Arch Scholarship from National Dance Foundation Bermuda, Vidya is pleased to have had the opportunity to show she is worthy of the support.

“I think it's good to always stay humble but when you do get a sign that you are doing something good, it is nice,” she said.

A picture of the Bermudian dancer graced both the cover and an inside page of the Sixth Form Choreographic Show programme, which was presented to audiences at last week’s performances.

The dancers were all in the final two years at Tring, a coeducational day and boarding school in Hertfordshire, England.

“They pick a handful of students to choreograph pieces and I choreographed a neoclassical ballet piece,” Vidya said. “I really enjoyed the process.”

The effort will count towards her Trinity diploma, an “advanced performance award” given to mark a “professional standard of performance”.

Of the three pieces Vidya danced in, her favourite was one about a casting couch that had Marilyn Monroe as its theme.

“It was all quite abstract,” she said. “That one came most easily to me because I could put emotion into it. Not many people [at Tring] have experienced the toxicity of the dance world yet; at school we’re quite sheltered. But I'm sure all of us can imagine what it would be like. So it was kind of that anger and frustration of, you can't get your dream if you don't do something you're not comfortable with.”

It helped that her friend who choreographed the piece gave great direction.

“He gave us a very specific way to hold our face and how to move our bodies; how to portray the emotion,” Vidya said.

Her Cecchetti training fell under “a separate syllabus”. About 80 dancers competed. Vidya was proposed by Gillian Toogood, who recently retired as a Cecchetti teacher, and Antony Dowson, the artistic director at Tring.

She performed The Diamond Fairy variation from Sleeping Beauty, said to be one of the hardest when considering speed and technique.

It impressed the Society, which presented her with the Barbara Geoghegan Award for musicality.

“It’s based on how you move your body and respond to music, timing, rhythm; just the feeling of that piece of music,” she said.

“This is the third competition I've ever done and it was really nice to see some outcome from it because when you go into competitions and you put so much effort and work into training for it, and you don't get anything …. I mean, that's just how it's going to be sometimes, but it is a bit disheartening. I think it is really good to see the progression [I’ve made], I would say, within the last three years.”

It helped with her choreographed work, which was performed by 14 Tring dancers randomly assigned by teachers at the school.

“I kind of experimented and did some task setting with the dancers. I gave them emotions and underlying problems and prompts to choreograph around, and then I just used some of that choreography and put it together. I did have pre-choreographed sections but I think it's nice to take into consideration what dancers’ experiences are, their [thoughts] on your piece and how they feel they should be moving in it,” Vidya said.

“I found it challenging for sure because I had quite a big cast. And I think it is difficult [with friends]. I didn't want to make the wrong impression or come off salty or kind of cold. So I tried to make my rehearsals as light-hearted as possible. I didn’t want it to be a tedious task for them. And in the end, they really all enjoyed the piece.”