Tutu divine

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.'

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.

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.'

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.'

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.