But such interaction between the different artistic disciplines - with dancers, composers, artists and designers sparking ideas off each other - is unusual. So when Val Hitchen and Janie Harris of Focus on Dance were thinking of ways to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Royal Academy of Dan-cing, they came up with the idea of a “Compose for Dance” competition, which would bring together music students, young dancers and designers. As Val Hitchen explains: “I wanted to mix ballet and music because I felt that all kinds of creativity could emerge from it.”

She approached the Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey, which responded enthusiastically, organising a competition for its students, few of whom had seen a ballet let alone thought about composing a ballet score.

One of the winning entrants, 13-year-old Cheryl Frances Hoad, who is studying the cello, admits that she “had never seen very much ballet, so it was a considerable challenge . . . When I wrote the music I didn’t really have any vivid pictures or images in my mind. I just wrote what I wanted.”

Yet Cheryl’s Ballet Suite No 1 so impressed the former ballerina Lynn Seymour that she eagerly joined the Focus on Dance project, choreographing a 20-minute ballet to be danced by pupils of the Elmhurst Ballet School.

“What’s interesting,” she says, “is that the dancers obviously feel an empathy with the music. After all they are all much the same age as the composer. And its freshness - rather than the standard classical repertoire - has liberated them. They’ve begun to move in a different way. You feel as if it’s given them the chance to create a new dance vocabulary for themselves.”

The ballet - for 12 dancers - is set in a school dormitory. We follow the girls as they practise pir-ouettes, nurse their sore feet, worry about spots, feel homesick, play silly pranks and gang up on each other.

“I thought of the idea,” explains Lynn Seymour, “because of Cheryl’s age. Her music is very doomy, full of painful teenage feelings and desperate yearnings - and I wanted the dancers to identify these feelings and express them.

“What’s been so good about working on the project is that it has made the girls less self-conscious; they have have had the chance to laugh at their fears and obsessions - to grow up as dancers.”

Cheryl shared her prize with two other winners at the Yehudi Menuhin School. Sasha Sitkovetsky, 10, from Russia, says: “I have seen the Kirov Ballet and my favourite ballet music is Swan Lake, so when I was composing I imagined the dancers moving to the music.”

His suite has been turned into a 12-minute dance, Horoscope by Gail Taphouse, a Royal Ballet dancer for 19 years and former winner of the Frederick Ashton Prize for Choreography.

Horoscope, which illustrates the 12 signs of the Zodiac, will be danced by 37 pupils from the Royal Academy of Dancing. “I’ve never worked with children before,” says Gail Taphouse. “It was really daunting. I took a whistle with me to the first rehearsal as I didn’t think I’d be able to control them. But they were so attentive you could have heard a pin drop. I choreographed five-and-a-half minutes’ worth of dance in just two rehearsals.”

The third winner, 17-year-old Konstantin Boyarsky, says that his Concerto-Ballet-Grosso, for string orchestra and solo violin, was partly inspired by the film music of Ennio Morricone - adding yet another dimension to this fusion of the arts. It has been choreographed by 22-year-old Matthew Hart, who is also a member of the Royal Ballet.

Konstantin’s Russian background and the tragic atmosphere evoked by his music gave Matthew Hart the idea of basing the ballet on the story of the assassination of the Tsar and Tsarina in 1918.

He has focused on the plight of the Tsar’s five children, murdered before they had a chance to reach adulthood. Their characters will be realised by five teenagers from the Royal Ballet School.

“It’s actually quite difficult to find dancers who can make an audience feel something with them; who are not just bodies moving in space. But I think my five dancers do achieve this - partly I suppose because they can identify closely with the children; they are teenagers too,” he says.

All three ballets will be performed for the first time on Sunday March 19 at a gala evening in the New Victoria Theatre in Woking, Surrey. It will be a showcase for this unique educational project, which has brought together not just ballet and music students but has also involved the Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design, whose students have designed the costumes and sets.

Val Hitchen hopes that this is only the first of many such co-operative ventures and plans to organise a biennial “Compose for Dance” competition. Not only have ballet, music and art students been given the chance to learn from each other, they have also had a valuable opportunity to work with professional performers. As Cheryl Frances Hoad confirms, “This project has been much more exciting than I ever imagined.”

* Tickets for the gala evening at the New Victoria Theatre in Woking, Surrey, on Sunday, March 19, can be obtained from 0483 274319 or 0483 761144