`All the tears, the work, the times you look in the mirror and say `oh, my God'. It's all worth it when you get to do your first solo." Monica Loughman (20) from Santry in Dublin is rehearsing for a demanding two-minute solo - from the third act of Don Quixote - with the Perm State Ballet in Russia. "By the time I get to Ireland I'll be an old hand." Her Perm premiere was last Friday. She comes to Ireland with the company on October 27th, performing her solo as part of the Concert Programme. She will also be "one of the sylphs" in La Sylphide and a swan in Swan Lake.
Monica was 13 and a student with Marie Cole in Dublin when she auditioned for the Perm Dance Academy. She and nine other Irish girls were offered a place. She stayed for three years and studied ballet, character dance, repertoire, gymnastics, history of ballet, piano, French and Russian. "When I first went out I cried all the time. I was only a baby. But I learned to speak up for myself. They called me a hooligan because I was a bit more alive than the others. "But I was good. I got addicted. It's like body-building. You compete with yourself."
Four of the other Irish girls lasted the pace but only she was offered a place in the Perm Company, which was established as a result of the world-famous Kirov Ballet fleeing to Perm from Hitler's forces besieging St Petersburg (then called Leningrad).
"School was very harsh. I have a cool life now in the company," she recalls. Nevertheless, her first year was tough going. "They expected a lot of me and I was pathetic. They had all done eight years in the Academy and I had only done three." Even though she is Irish and is only now comfortable with her spoken Russian, she is treated no differently from the others: "They're just as rude to me as they are to everyone else!"
Fast forward to her preparations for her ere. premiere. "The main thing is not to fall or slip." The Don Quixote solo involves a lot of "big jumps and turns" and she will be surrounded by other members of the 80-strong company, sitting and standing on the stage. "It will seem like a thousand eyes watching me. They'll know if I make a mistake." How will she cope? "You need lots of stamina and a good sense of balance. You also need to enjoy yourself, then the people who are watching you will enjoy it too."
We speak by telephone, redialling every 10 minutes as the Russian telephone service cuts us off with boring regularity. She is feeling very tired today. It has just started snowing, which she doesn't like, and she has been rehearsing very hard. "This morning, although I had nine hours sleep, I felt like my legs were dead. I can hardly make it up the stairs. I feel like an old woman." Already the temperature is minus 20 degrees: "That's OK, it's fresh. Wait until it gets down to minus 30," she laughs. She has a demanding routine of an hour of class and three hours of rehearsals in the morning. She has a couple of hours free in the afternoon and then every second night she is back for another short rehearsal at 6.30 p.m. before the show begins at 7 p.m. She performs every second night. She likes the discipline: "I like having a routine. In my free time I wash my clothes and watch TV. Or eat."
She is not so happy about the state of the Russian economy: "It's on the rocks. I haven't been paid for a long time. The last time I got paid I got something like £10. I survive because my mother sends me money. I don't know how the Russians manage. If that happened in Ireland there would be civil war. The Russians have been through so much, they just put up with it. I really don't know how they eat or look after themselves.
"All the communists are over 80. Communism is out of fashion. There is no support for it. I mean, look at what communism has done to this country. The TV shows now are all making fun of Lenin and Stalin. Before it was all Father Lenin and Uncle Stalin. It was a big fairy story. But why would you want to be a communist if you have no food?"
Initially, young people in Russia wanted "to be just like America", but now "they just want to be themselves, have their own culture, their own image". The other dancers in the Perm State Ballet enjoy coming to Ireland for their tours (they were here last year too): "They love Ireland. The funniest thing for them is seeing cows and sheep everywhere. Perm is an industrial town. There aren't any farm animals around."
She doesn't see herself staying in Perm indefinitely: "I'm not being paid properly here. Eventually I'll get a job in a company in the US or Europe." Her Russian boyfriend, who is also in the Perm State Ballet, "wants to get out of here even quicker than I do". She misses Dublin. She comes home for six weeks in the summer, but she has lost touch with a lot of her old friends. She goes to the pub with her sisters and their friends, but she has to be ever-vigilant: "I can't really drink because if you have a lot of beer every night your muscles turn to mush."
The Perm State Tchaikovsky Ballet of Russia is touring Ireland from October 27th to November 7th. Opening night features the Concert Programme at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin at 8 p.m. The company also travels to Cork Opera House and the Town Hall Theatre in Galway.
