SCULPTURE SALE PAYS DANCER'S TUITION

British sculptor Brian Alabaster is selling an £18,000 bronze sculpture he made of a family friend, 13-year old ballerina Florence Barker, to help her pay tuition at London’s Royal Ballet School, according to the Daily Mail. Alabaster, whose work routinely sells in the six figures, stepped in to help when he heard that Florence's parents were unable to pay their part of the prestigious program’s £32,000 in annual fees, even aided by a substantial grant from the British Department of Education.

All the proceeds for the sculpture will go towards her tuition, and anything extra will be used for additional costs, including ballet shoes, which, at £60 a pair, have to be replaced every two weeks. So what does Alabaster get out of it? Karma, mostly. The life-sized sculpture, which took 100 hours to complete, is to be the centerpiece at his exhibition in the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show in London, May 24-28, 2011.

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