Laura Morera

In knee-high leather boots, she has a robust frame that can take the knocks, not to mention matching Carlos Acosta's leaps (the pair appeared together for the second time last year in Kim Brandstrup's Rushes).

Laura arrived at White Lodge, the Royal Ballet's feeder school in Richmond, from Madrid, aged 11. In only her second year in the company, she met her Australian fiancé Justin, a former Royal Ballet first soloist, on a tour bus. 'I never had to choose between him and work, so it was very lucky.' Laura and Justin live in Bethnal Green and, during the five-week summer holidays, she helps with his travelling ballet-school business. 'In Japan you try to make the children a bit more passionate and energetic because they're so focused and disciplined, whereas in Spain you have to do the opposite.'

After a five-year engagement (and 13 years together), the pair will marry in February in Malaysia. 'I loved that he never got too caught up in the ballet world. He didn't let it define him. It is just a profession after all.'


From left: Laura Morera; Yuhui Choe; model wears dress with silver embroidery, price on request, Alexander McQueen (020 7355 0088); tights, £5, Jonathan Aston at www.mytights.com; ballet pumps, £75, French Sole (0118 988 8800); Lauren Cuthbertson

Lauren Cuthbertson

Carlos Acosta and Friends

She lives with her friend and classmate Jonathan Watkins in Shoreditch. They met as teenagers training at White Lodge in Richmond. Her brother was also a student there but made the jump to musical theatre and is currently in the We Will Rock You chorus line at the Dominion Theatre.

Perhaps the toughest test so far for this workaholic, who prefers to carry on dancing in her summer holidays, was a stress fracture in her metatarsal last year which meant three months out. 'I managed to do two more shows on adrenaline but afterwards I'd just cry because I was in so much pain. My mum told me she wouldn't talk to me unless I got it sorted.' She spent the time off studying the ballet classics and examining her previous performances on film, and returned to work with Wayne McGregor on Chroma. 'One of my career highs,' she says.


From left: model wears chiffon dress with flowers, £2,834, Blumarine (020 7823 1555); Frise Marquise white gold and diamond earrings, £7,950, and white gold and diamond ring, £13,150, Chaumet (020 7495 6303); Laura Morera; Lauren Cuthbertson; Roberta Marquez; Marianela Nuñez; Alexandra Ansanelli

Alexandra Ansanelli

Ondine,

In 2005 Alexandra was a principal with the New York City Ballet modern classical dance company, winning rave reviews from The New York Times, but it wasn't enough and she quit, looking to learn the traditional repertoire in Europe.

'It wasn't about what they had done for me - they had done so much - but I wanted to continue my growth.' She turned down a few offers, including La Scala in Milan, in favour of The Royal Ballet after an audience with artistic director Monica Mason, who watched her dance Gisele (learned from videos) in a rented Manhattan apartment. A year later she graduated to principal.

Alexandra comes from Oyster Bay, Long Island. As a teenager she played tennis, rode horses and was told by her soccer coach she could get into Yale on a sports scholarship. However, her father, a second-generation Italian doctor, and her housewife mother thought it a better idea to follow her grandfather, a vaudeville performer, on to the stage. 'Once I got exposed to the stage it was just in my genes to perform.'

Yuhui Choe

Being strangled in Flemming Flindt's The Lesson was Yuhui's first role since her promotion to first soloist. She won her place in Covent Garden in 2002 after beating 130 others from around the world to the Prix de Lausanne in Switzerland (previous winners include Darcey Bussell, Carlos Acosta and Christopher Wheeldon).

Leaving behind her beautician mother and businessman father in Fukuoka, Japan, Yuhui arrived in Paris at the age of 14 to train under Japanese teacher Daini Kudo. Her grandparents were refugees from South Korea during the Korean War.

To take her mind off ballet, Yuhui makes Sunday morning trips to Columbia Road flower market. Her imperfect English is soft, staccato and a touch Cockney. In June, Yuhui threw fellow ballerina Lauren Cuthbertson a gyoza (Japanese dumpling) party. The pair are inseparable and have neighbouring flats off Shoreditch High Street. 'We're always banging on the living room wall when we want to chat to each other.'

Marianela Nuñez

Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake

Thiago joined the company in 2002, after training as an acrobat, a hip-hop dancer, and spending eight months in the Russian State Ballet. They quickly became lovers; then, with such obvious on-stage chemistry, too, the roles came in.

Aged 15, Marianela arrived at The Royal Ballet from Buenos Aires without a word of English but with the experience of a dancer twice her age. She had already bounded through Spain, Italy,

Uruguay, Japan and the USA on tour with Argentina's national ballet company and became a principal at The Royal Ballet in time for her 20th birthday.

With three older brothers and a policeman father, she was a welcome relief for her mother, and it was on her mother's insistence that she started dancing, aged three. 'I was really spoilt and got all the attention,' she laughs. After her audition for The Royal Ballet at 14, mid-tour in California, she was so convinced that she hadn't got in her mother had to whisk her to Disneyland to stem the tears. A congratulatory fax was waiting for them on their arrival back in Buenos Aires.

Roberta Marquez

Roberta's immaculate glow comes courtesy of a Peruvian mother, a Portuguese father and 20 years of Copacabana sun. Her boyfriend Arionel Vargas is a Cuban dancer with the English National Ballet, and has been a close friend of Carlos Acosta since their schooldays. He's currently touring the country in Manon and the pair recently got engaged. However, with his father in Cuba and mother in Ecuador, and Roberta's family in Rio, they're having trouble settling on a wedding location.

After four years' renting in Notting Hill, she has just bought a flat in Chiswick because W11 was out of her price range. 'Chiswick is more of a family place, a bit calmer.'

Earlier this year Roberta was a late replacement in The Sleeping Beauty, but at the pivotal moment there was no spindle on which to prick her finger. 'It's all about that, so I had to fake it. I couldn't believe they forgot it, it's the most important thing in the ballet. Apparently someone stole it.'

Peter Wright's production of The Nutcracker is at the Royal Opera House from 15 December. The Nutcracker transmits live to cinemas across the UK on Sunday 28 December at 12.30pm

Model: Zoe Havler at Premier. Hair and make-up by Charlotte Reid at One Make-up using FrÈdÈric Fekkai and MAC. Fashion assistants: Orsolya Szabo and Hannah Bort. Shot on location in the rehearsal room of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

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