Alan was born in Crosshaven, Cork, and he grew up there with his seven older brothers and sisters, mother Nora and late father Finn.

He began studying ballet as a child, and is now the artistic director and a principal dancer with Cork City Ballet. His work there includes producing, directing and choreographing the hugely successful Ballet Spectacular seasons, and he has performed leading roles in ballets such as Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Le Corsaire and La Bayadere.

He is also director of the full-time Diploma in Dance course at Colaiste Stiofain Naofa, based at the Firkin Crane, Cork, and is principal of the Alan Foley Academy of Dance in Cork, where he still lives.

Monica grew up in Santry, north Dublin, with her two older sisters and her late mother Monica and dad Edward. She moved to Russia at the age of 13 to continue her ballet training at the Perm State Ballet School, and danced solo roles in ballets such as Giselle, Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, The Nutcracker and Don Quixote with Perm State Ballet.

She has been a principal dancer with Cork City Ballet since 1999, and danced the lead role in Giselle with the Russian State Ballet at the Point theatre in Dublin in 2003. Her autobiography, The Irish Ballerina, was published in 2004.

Monica also runs her own ballet school at Larkhill school, Whitehall. She lives in Co Meath with her partner Gavin.

Alan and Monica will be performing in Ballet Spectacular with Eastern Promise, which tours to the Helix, Dublin; Cork Opera House;

Town Hall Theatre, Galway; and UCH, Limerick, from 1 to 6 November.

Alan on Monica I had heard about Monica before I met her, as she was an Irish girl studying ballet in Russia, and I had studied at the Kirov School in Russia in 1989, when it first opened its doors to westerners. A lot of people left ballet after their Russian experiences because they just couldn't hack it, but I had heard that Monica had stuck it out and that she was very good.

I saw her dancing with the Perm State Ballet in Romeo and Juliet in Cork, and she was fabulous and I arranged to meet her backstage. I asked her if she would like to come to Cork City Ballet and she said she'd love to. I liked her straight away because she was just so refreshingly normal. We clicked straight away because I'm not into the stuffy kind of image that ballet had up to then, and neither is she.

She came and danced Swan Lake with me, and over the years we found that we were getting a lot of engagements together, and it became an 'Alan and Monica' thing in a very short space of time really.

Even though she was a bit younger than me, Monica was always very mature, probably because she had lived away from home from such an early age.

Monica is a fantastic person and friend and an amazing ballet dancer, and she's really brilliant to work with. We have a great relationship and that makes it easier, particularly when we have to portray lovers on stage.

Sometimes with other partners, you could be gazing adoringly at them on stage while secretly wishing to throttle them! We hang out together and always have a great time, and would regularly travel abroad to see other ballet companies perform.

Last year, we released a DVD called The Magic of Ballet with Alan & Monica, and our coffee-table book, Ballet Through The Lens . . . Foley Loughman . . . A Portrait, will be launched in November 2006. It's a beautiful photographic representation of our lives on stage and behind the scenes, and we're both really excited about it. Our hope and aim is to let people in Ireland see that it is actually possible to train and make a living as a ballet dancer.

Monica on Alan When Alan and I first met, my first impression of him was how mature and at ease with himself he was, and I suppose I was a bit in awe of the fact that he was so self-assured, because he was 28 and I was only 18. I treated him as an elder at first, and was very respectful towards him, and our friendship developed quite slowly over the years to the point where he is now one of my best friends.

Alan was really kind to me from the beginning, and over the past 10 years he has taken me under his wing. What I love about him is how he helped me to learn how to be at ease with myself, because as a ballerina, you can be hard on yourself because you are always striving to keep people happy. I would always tell Alan if I was feeling low before a performance, but he'd know anyway, because he always knows what I'm thinking, and he would cover up if something wasn't going right for me on stage.

Alan is my mentor and I think I quote him at least five times a day. I've learned from him to think before I speak, because I tend to open my gob before I think. He has always been very kind in sharing the knowledge he has acquired over the years in the business, which is great, as some people aren't willing to offer that kind of help because they had to learn the hard way themselves. Alan will always help me work out how best to do things so that I don't make mistakes.

We quite often play lovers on stage, and it is not difficult to convey the emotion needed, because I love the bones of Alan as a friend and have the utmost respect for him, even though we don't fancy each other.

My partner Gavin is absolutely brilliant and has no problem with it because he knows it's just a performance. The thing is that even though you may be gazing lovingly into someone's eyes on stage, in your head you're calculating the next moves you have to perform.

Alan and I spend a lot of time together, rehearsing in the studio, and although I have three other male dance partners, we would dance together the most often. He is really funny, and we always have a great time together, and outside of work, we love to go for a swim and sauna, and we also sunbathe together.