Dressed in baggy trousers and baseball caps, they are not who you would usually associate with pirouettes and performance art.

But teenagers from Streatham’s toughest estates are learning ballet as part of a dance project helping them build a life away from crime and off the streets.

Some 30 teenagers learn street dance through Ghetto Posh, a project running every Saturday at the Streatham Community Centre in Wellfield Road.

But its not just learning dance steps ranging from ballet to reggae, breakdancing and bodypopping – the project has offered leading members jobs teaching classes and performing all over London.

This has helped a number of teenagers at risk of slipping into gangs and in trouble with the police to move away from a life of crime and focus on their futures.

Seventeen-year-old Khamal Reynolds, from Leigham Court Road, is one such member.

“I would have been in [Feltham Young Offender Institution] last year if it wasn’t for Ghetto Posh,” he says.

“Now I stay off the roads and don’t hang around the block (estate) getting into trouble.”

Khamal says he has always loved dance, but through teaching and performing - the group have a regular gig dancing at a Choice FM roadshow – he has found confidence and a sense of direction.

“I get more pleasure from teaching people and helping people from the same background as me as I would get being a professional dancer,” he declares.

“It’s what I want to do with my life.”

The person who has inspired these young people is the 10-year director of Ghetto Posh, Sonia Abdallaoui, a street dancer from Paris who now lives in Streatham.

Fifteen-year-old Velvet Prettie explains how Sonia is more of a mentor, supporting her students in all aspects of their lives.

“She talks to us about how to respect each other and has taught us trust,” he explains.

“That has helped me a lot and is about much more than dancing. We are like a family.”

But Sonia says she just wants to help people she believes have not been given a chance by society.

“I really feel for them,” she explains. “People look at the way they dress and just judge them. The police do and the public.”

She says dancers like Khamal and Velvet have visited shops to ask to put up fliers in the window and have been rejected because they look like gang members.

A private gym interested in Ghetto Posh running a class soon withdrew their offer when the dancers arrived dressed in hoodies and caps.

“It’s not fair on them,” Sonia says. “These guys are trying to make lives for themselves doing something they love.

“The look is part of street dance and it shouldn’t matter. People need to understand that.”

There is certainly an irony that something doing so much to help people away from guns, knives and gangs can actually strengthen a stereotype in some of people’s eyes.

This is despite the hard work the group has put in to defusing the gun and knife problem in the borough.

They run workshops across the borough, have spoken in primary schools and got involved with anti-youth violence programmes like last year’s high-profile Don’t Trigger campaign, performing in Maxi Priest’s video.

But despite receiving funding from Lambeth Council, the project needs more investment to reach more people in trouble across London.

For project manager Jonathon Johnson,18, from Lewisham, there are few projects in south London doing more to solve the problems blighting the capital’s youth.

And whether that’s performing ballet or breakdancing, that is Ghetto Posh’s ultimate goal.

For more information on Ghetto Posh call 07522 489254 or look for the project on myspace.com