A real wow moment for Poppy as she sets out to wow the judges on Sky One’s ‘Got to Dance’ contest

The 10-year-old Leverington School pupil and her fellow dancers known as Unity Academy beat hundreds of other hopefuls to win through to the semi-finals on “Got to Dance” with not one but two of the celebrity judges offering to mentor the group.

Proud mum Lisa Gill, a teacher at Meadowgate School in Wisbech, explained Poppy, who is the second of her three children, has been dancing since she was three, when she enjoyed lessons with Alison’s Street Dance.

She joined the Unity Academy two years ago and travels to East London at least twice a week to train with the other members, who range in age from 10 to 22 - Poppy is the youngest.

Unity Academy won a place in the semi final of the Sky show after performing at an initial audition earlier in the year, before then going on to perform before a live audience at the Camden Round House and the three celebrity judges: Australian dance guru Adam Garcia, who starred in Coyote Ugly, Ashley Banjo of Diversity fame and former Pussycat Doll Kimberley Wyatt.

The judges had to choose acts they wanted to mentor in the next round and both Adam and Kimberley asked for Unity, and the group chose Adam, because of his musical theatre expertise.

He has been mentoring the group, joining them at practices over the past few months. Each judge as six acts and they will have to choose the acts they want to take through to the final over the coming week.

Unity Academy will make their bid to be finalists on Wednesday, live at 8pm on Sky One.

The final will go out live at 8pm on Friday (August 29) with a public vote on who will win the £250,000 prize.

Lisa explained Unity Academy would love to win the prize so they can buy their own dance studio, instead of having to rely on renting and borrowing space to practice.

Poppy’s siblings: Jonah (11) is a talented football and trains with Cambridge united and younger sister Willow (7) is a budding gymnast.