‘The Russian critics said I looked like Quasimodo’

"A hot head and a cold brain! It took me almost twenty years to learn that I need that to dance well and enjoy performing," says Natalia Osipova, principal ballerina of the Royal Ballet. "But it wasn't always easy for me to find that balance and I was tearing myself apart, making myself sick with the drama. Before I go on stage, I pray to God and ask him to help me control that energy."

Hailed by Telegraph dance critic Mark Monahan as a woman who "defies gravity more completely and serenely than any other ballerina I have ever seen", ...