A DANCE school is preparing for its final curtain call after 95 years of classes because its teacher can no longer afford to live in Oxford.

Thousands of dancers have twirled through classes at the Vera Legge School of Dance but the troupe will perform for the last time tomorrow.

Dance teacher Joanna Walton, who runs the school, said she had been forced to shut it down after being priced out of Oxford.

Miss Walton, from Cherwell Drive in Marston, has been at the helm of the dance school for the past 10 years, but said she would move to Cheshire to be with her partner because houses were more affordable.

The 46-year-old added: “I’ve been born and bred in Oxford. If I want to be secure, I’m going to have to move. It’s upsetting. It sounds a shocking reason to be moving.”

Miss Walton currently teaches more than 50 youngsters and adults each week at the Regal Community Centre, in Ridgefield Road, and Donnington Community Centre, in Townsend Square.

She started toe-tapping lessons at the school when she was about eight before leaving for a London dance college after completing her A-Levels at Cherwell School.

But she left the bright lights of the capital and returned to Oxford in 2005 to fulfill her childhood dream of running the dance school she had such fond memories of.

She added: “You kind of want other people to enjoy what you have enjoyed. I was obviously quite nervous, it is a big thing when you are taking on a school that has been there for a long time.”

But Miss Walton said she has been forced to leave her four-bed rented accommodation and move to Cheshire where partner Joe Curran, a factory worker, lives.

She added: “I can’t afford to buy in Oxford. It’s phenomenal, the difference in prices. I have been priced out of Oxford, it’s ridiculous.”

Dancers will unite for their final performance, which will mark the school’s closure, tomorrow at Kennington Village Hall.

Miss Walton said she was crying, along with her pupils, when she told them they would be dancing their final routines this month. She added: “I will miss them all terribly. At the show I’m going to be a blubbering mess.”

Diana Brown, daughter of dance school founder Vera Legge, said her mother left school at 14 with dreams of starting her own dance school. She then started the school in 1920, first teaching youngsters in a basement of a boarding house in Little Clarendon Street.

The mother-of-one, of Cassington, said she followed in her mother’s footsteps and ran the dance school for about 40 years before Miss Walton took over.

But she said she would only have wanted a former dance student to take the reins from Miss Walton. Mrs Brown, 77, added: “I’m sad that it’s finishing now. I wanted it to be remembered as it was and as my mother had it and the way she did things.”