Jadiyah Bailey has been hailed as a top dancer by the directors of the performance group Troika.The 15-year-old is also on the high honour roll at Berkeley Institute and the school’s youngest student to pass the maths GCSE.Despite her academic accomplishments, it’s the arts where she hopes to make her mark.“I’ve been dancing since I was three, so it’s always been in my life,” she said, adding that the passion is shared by her 13-year-old sister Jaidah, and three-year-old sister Jayunae.The S2 student won’t graduate until 2013, but she dreams of going overseas to study dance and acting.She recently accompanied Troika on a tour of the top schools for theatre and performing arts in New York City.“I would like to dance professionally and act for films. What I’d really love to be involved in would be like the ‘Step Up’ movies, which combine dance and acting.”Jadiyah, who lives in Somerset, attends In Motion School of Dance. She has been performing with Troika since the production group formed in the summer of 2009.She joined 21 other students at the end of last year to tour the Alvin Ailey Dance Extension and the Broadway Dance Centre in Manhattan. The group also witnessed the Garth Fagan Dance company’s 40th anniversary performance, attended Broadway show rehearsal workshops at Ripley Grier Studios, and took a tour of NBC Studios.Troika member Shoa Bean said: “Jadiyah has become one of our star dancers in the team of Troika. We went to open classes at the Broadway Dance Centre and she was able to hold her own.“We dropped in on an advanced ballet class and the teacher pulled her to the front of the class to use her as an example in front of kids who’d been taking the class for weeks. For someone who was there for the first time, that’s very big.”The week-long trip exposed Troika players to the performing arts on an international level. Jadiyah has incorporated her experiences into theatre classes at Berkeley Institute.“We’re writing our own scripts based off the idea of broken glass, which we’ll perform in class next week. I’m writing a script for a short play called ‘Truth Behind the Broken Glass’. It’s about a girl who gets raped walking home after a party, and it deals with pregnancy and suicide.”The dark themes are a break from a heavy routine of ballet, jazz and modern dance. Making the high honour roll at Berkeley this year took a lot of work as well.She said: “They raised their standards this year, so to get high honours you have to have an average of 87 percent. I just made it, with 88 percent.”Through Troika, Jadiyah is concentrating on building up a resume and learning how to do formal auditions in the hope of being able to perform as a career.As a backup option, she said: “I’d also like to work as a real estate agent.”Jadiyah’s last public performance was the Christmas recital of the Nutcracker at the Ruth Seaton James Centre for the Performing Arts. In Motion School of Dance’s annual performance comes up in May.She said: “Dancing takes up my whole schedule. I’ve been very busy with it for the last five years. But when we went to the Broadway Dance Centre I could see kids in my age group were a lot more advanced. If I can, I would like to go overseas. But I will have to wait and see.”