Dipesh Verma first discovered ballet at 13 while browsing through YouTube on a mobile phone borrowed from his sister. The graceful movements immediately hooked Verma, a freestyle street dancer in Siliguri, and he began following a few dancers and imitating their moves. “It was a small town and ballet seemed so far away,” says Verma, 19. “But slowly, I found more love for ballet and started researching about ballet companies and how I could formally learn it in India.”It was only when he saw a YouTube video of veteran Israeli-American ballet teacher Yehuda Ma'or teaching two young men Manish Chauhan and Amiruddin Shah at dancer-choreographer Ashley Lobo ’s Danceworx academy in Mumbai in 2017 that he realised that there was a way to realise his dream. “They were the first boys I saw training in ballet in India. I was happy that there was a way to get out.”In 2017, Chauhan and Shah, the son of a taxi driver and welder respectively, made headlines for dancing their way to international ballet fame by securing an admission at Oregon Ballet Theatre in the US. Their journey inspired Verma and fellow student Bobby Roy to enroll at Dancework in 2018 and apply for 'Going Home' project, a programme that offers free ballet lessons to talented youth without the financial means to pursue a career in dance and had helped Chauhan and Shah as well. After a year-and-a-half of rigorous training, they both got admission at Paris Marais Dance School with full scholarships last November.Lobo recalls the duo's “natural talent and drive”. “When I met them and they wrote to me for the scholarship they could not speak English. I told them I needed to see that they could find a way to convince me," he says. "They figured out how to write letters in English as well as expressed their desire clearly. That attitude combined with their natural talent told me they were very ready for the journey.”It wasn’t easy for Verma to convince his family to let him move to Mumbai to learn ballet in the first place. “My parents never liked me dancing. They were forcing me to study medicine but I felt if I did it I wouldn’t be happy my whole life,” he recalls. “Since childhood, I’d hide from my father, a grocer, and dance. If he knew I’d gone to my friend's place to dance, he would scream like crazy.” Nevertheless, after finishing his high school, Verma came to Mumbai at the age of 16. The early months were a struggle -- he had just Rs 6000 and no permanent residence, staying in a chawl, with friends and even sleeping on railways platforms.Around the same time in Delhi, Bobby Roy, a Bollywood dancer also decided to come to Mumbai to pursue his dreams of becoming a professional dancer after finishing class 10. Roy, whose father hawks clothes, had been earning some money through performances but was keen to make it big. “My family is not financially strong and at first, my father was upset because I am the oldest so he wanted me to become an engineer,” Roy, 19, says. “One day I told him I'll start studying to become an engineer but I won't get the happiness I do from dance. After that he said, do whatever you want.” After struggling to find a foothold in Mumbai for a few months, Roy finally joined ballet classes at Danceworx.“I didn’t like ballet at all at first. I didn’t understand it,” he says. But this changed when one day when he saw Shah performing Don Quixote in class and was spellbound. Even then, the transition was far from smooth. “Ballet dancers need flexibility, technique, and talent and I had none of these,” he says. “My body wasn't meant for ballet. So I began working ten times as hard -- I would memorise steps and stretch in the studio during lunch.” When Roy went home, people would confuse ballet for belly dancing and ask him why he was dancing like a girl. But the hard work paid off. “One-and-a-half years ago, I would struggle even to do a little jump in the air and split. I still can't believe I am here.”Life has come full circle for Verma as well. “In the beginning, my parents were so unhappy and tried to stop me from going to Mumbai saying I wouldn't survive and would come back in a week or that there was no money in dancing,” he recalls. “But after two years, they saw I was getting opportunities and scholarships in the US. Now they’re happy.”“I feel very honoured to do ballet. It is not just dancing -- the music, the orchestra, the theatre, the story and the way it all comes together is such a dream,” Verma says. “Even now, when I enter a theatre, I start crying.”For now, both Roy and Verma are keen to perform around the world after they graduate next year but they also want to come back and guide others like them. “Till my body has strength, I want to perform around the world but It is my dream to come back to India and open a ballet school,” says Roy. “Just as I got a chance, I want to provide a chance to people who have talent but face financial difficulties.”