Ballet isn't all glory and frilly tutus, Irish dancer Monica Loughman, soloist with the Perm Ballet, tells Arminta Wallace

Think "ballet", followed by "Russian" and "classical", and up pops the photo in your brain: a fluttery creature in a scrap of white tulle, all feathery, feminine grace. It is an iconic image of extraordinary tenacity, and it is epitomised by one of the most famous of Russian classical ballet solos, the dance of the dying swan.

The young woman who will perform that piece at the National Concert Hall later this week is, however, about as far from a swooning cygnet as you could imagine. Monica Loughman has the slim build and loose-limbed walk of a professional dancer, but she talks as tough as anybody in her native Santry - except for the Russian words which slip here and there into her conversation, natural as summer rain. Her take on the dying swan, on the other hand, has a steely pragmatism that is 100 per cent pure Dub.

"Physically, it isn't hard, although it's kind of sore on the old calf muscles because it's the same thing over and over again," she says, rubbing her leg as if it aches just to talk about it. "But mentally, it's hard. The steps are so simple that it's hard to get the emotion across to the audience. It's really a role for an older, more experienced dancer - but, see, my mam died in January, so when I do it I think, well, I've seen this happening, and I can't let her down." She pauses for a moment or two, then looks up and grins. "Wait till you see the costume. It's white tulle with feathers and a red stone in the middle that's supposed to signify blood." She indicates the relevant point on her navel. "Although it reminds me of a belly-dancing outfit, I have to say . . ."

Loughman, who has been studying in Russia since she was 14 and is the only Western European ever to have been given a full-time contract by the Perm State Ballet, will be making a guest appearance in the NCH's summer ballet gala - an exuberant affair which will see the Irish Ballet Orchestra, conducted by Georgy Zhemchuzhin, perched high above the dancers on a specially-built raised platform. This will, in turn, leave the stage free for special effects in a programme of highlights from the best-known classical ballets, not to mention virtuoso highjinks from international superstar Galina Stepanenko, prima ballerina of the Bolshoi and, according to Loughman, something of a surprise package herself.

"I saw her dance before I came over," she says. "It was a show where loads of famous people came to Perm for an evening of Diaghilev, who was born in Perm. And of course we Perm dancers would be a bit . . . well, every company likes their own dancers, you know?

"So you look at dancers from other companies and you say, 'Oh, well, that's just not good enough', because techniques are different. And I took a look at her and she's a small lady, and she's not terribly thin, you know? I mean, I'm not saying she's fat, but she's not rake-thin, either, so I was going, 'Yeah, OK, whatever'. But when she started to dance I was just, like, wow. She is just so fast, and so brilliant - and I rarely say that about people, but she bowled me over. She bowled us all over."

The enthusiasm of Loughman and her Perm colleagues is clearly shared by the balletic powers-that-be in Russia: Moscow-born Stepanenko, who graduated from the Moscow Ballet Academy in 1984, has won just about every prize and award the ballet-mad Russians can bestow. She is a Merited Artist of Russia as well as a People's Artist; she has been dancing leading roles at the Bolshoi for the past decade. Now, at the peak of her creative powers, she is touring the world with both Russian and foreign companies. Ballet is still a highly prestigious occupation in Russia, with dancers receiving the sort of popular attention and adulation reserved for pop stars and footballers in the West.

Behind the scenes, though - as Loughman knows only too well - it's another story. To make it to the top as a dancer in Russia requires not just physical but mental stamina - in spades.

"It was like being in a very old, very strict boarding school," she recalls. "There was no food: I literally kept going on bars of chocolate. In the mornings, you'd get bread - half a slice of bread which was gone a bit hard, and a cup of tea, and sometimes there wouldn't even be sugar in the tea. At lunch, you'd have soup and sour cream to put in it; and then you'd always get this mouldy piece of meat - it was like a burger but when you opened it up, the smell of it, oh God - and cabbage. Now, I could live on cabbage, because you had to eat something."

It wasn't much of a diet for teenage girls who were, effectively, being moulded into top-class athletes. But, according to Loughman, the psychological treatment the youngsters received was even worse. "During my second year, I was feeling really homesick, and I was on the floor of my room, crying, when one of the teachers came in and accused me of being drunk. Next day, it was up in a report on the notice-board downstairs - Monica Loughman was so drunk she couldn't get up off the floor in her room. Me! One of the best of the Irish students, and one of the most straight-laced, who wouldn't dare do anything wrong, because if I touched a drop of drink, I'd be sure to be the one who was caught. But that was the sort of thing they did all the time. We were only children - and they didn't nurture us at all. You were always up against them - children up against adults - you had to be always on the ball. Which is kind of sad."

An even greater shock awaited her when she moved into the class taught by the school's number one teacher, Ludmilla Sakharova. "I used to be scared senseless going into that class. She was always hitting me, giving me a slap or a push. After two weeks of it, I decided I wasn't going back. I said to myself, 'If this is ballet, I don't want it. Forget it'." Loughman and another Irish girl were eventually moved into another class; and when, the following year, she was offered a contract by the Perm State Ballet, it seemed like all the years of struggle had paid off - especially when, last year, she was made an official soloist with the company. Happy ever after? Not quite.

"It has been fantastic, but they make huge demands. You work 10- and 12-hour days, you're supposed to be fit, you're supposed to look good, you're supposed to be happy all the time. Sometimes you might come in and you'd look a bit knackered - and you'd have words said to you. And when you see the amount of money you get into your hand - before I came back I got 60 dollars for two weeks' work - you just wonder if it's worth it."

So much so that Loughman may stay in Ireland - hardly the dance capital of the world, particularly in the present climate of cutbacks - rather than return to Perm. "Sixty dollars, and my apartment costs 100 dollars a month - what are you supposed to do?"

So what is she going to do? The Dub pragmatism reasserts itself. "First, I'm just gonna enjoy this, meeting all the Russians and having a good time and dancing for an Irish audience. And then I'll decide what to do with the rest of my life."

The Summer Ballet Gala opens at the National Concert Hall on Thursday and runs until July 27th. Booking on tel: 01-4170000