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Ballerinas Gear Up For World's Largest Student Ballet Scholarship Competition

By John McDevitt

PHILADELPHIA (CBS)--Semi-finals for the world's largest student ballet scholarship competition is going on this weekend at Swarthmore College.

It's the fifteenth anniversary season for the Youth America Grand Prix.

About 400 young ballet dancers will compete in semi-finals this weekend in Delaware County and only about 10 will go to finals in New York City in April.

13-year-old McKenna Sing of Glen Mills is performing. She says the competition is a big deal.

'It's huge you can get your name out there like that (snaps fingers) it's really big and if you make it to the finals it's even bigger because you can see all of the professionals out there and it's a great experience."

Former Bolshoi ballet dancer Larissa Saveliev is artistic director and founder of Youth America Grand Prix

"In addition to this we have event in Tokyo, Japan; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Buenos Aires, Argentina and one in Europe. We choose the students from all those places and they come to New York and you see literally 300 young talented dancers from all around the world."

More than 2 million dollars in scholarships gave been award since the competition began in 1999.

event founder
Event founder Larissa Saveliev (credit: John McDevitt)

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