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Argentinean born Royal Ballet First Soloist (now just promoted to Principal Ed), Marianela Nunez is a young woman who, apparently, has the world at her pink satin shod feet. Just turned 20, she is the latest in the Royal Ballet's current trend to breed top talent very young.

A hot favourite with audiences and critics alike, she is clearly destined to claim the highest ground in the company hierarchy alongside Darcey Bussell, Tamara Rojo and Alina Cojocaru. And Nunez is staking out her territory this summer in a series of glittering performances at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Last week her captivating performance as the tragic young Olga in Eugene Onegin broke all hearts, as usual. Tomorrow night she will explode on to the stage as the high octane fuelled gypsy girl, Kitri, in Don Quixote, Rudolf Nureyev's version of the 19th century Spanish extravaganza. Nunez's dazzling, virtuoso technique and ravishing smile will bring the house to its feet, as usual. And she closes the season next month as Swanilda, the village girl who imitates a doll to get her man in one of the best loved ballets of all time, the tuneful and irrepressible Coppelia. But for the lively and energetic Nunez, spending her time onstage wrapped around good-looking hunks like Carlos Acosta and Robert Tewsley merely serves as a painful reminder of her unlikely backstage role as a bachelor girl.

"If only real life was as simple as Swanilda's", sighs the girl from Buenos Aires, whose huge talent led to her appointment as the baby ballerina of her home town Teatro Colon Ballet at 14 years old. "Boy friends? Don t mention them, I m still waiting for one. All the good men in the company are taken already. I've been in the Royal Ballet 4 years and all I've managed are a few dates. I'm still available, can you believe it?" Well frankly, Marianela, no. "I had a boyfriend in Buenos Aires who wasn t really serious, she adds. But I want one here in London."

"What am I doing wrong?" she asks plaintively. "I don't like clubbing so on my nights off I go out with the girls then go home early. Alone. Maybe that's the problem, I should fool around a bit more. She may have a point there."

And it is not lack of experience with boys that hinders Nunez's efforts. She was born and brought up in the San Martin district of Buenos Aires where she shared her parents home with twin brothers Javier and Juan Manuel, now 26, and Sebastien, 23. As the baby, and the only daughter of the family, Marianela naturally twisted the men in her young life around her little finger. "My brothers would come to me when they wanted something", she remembers, "and say go ask Dad because he couldn't say no to me. Then my brothers would have to work hard to make it up to me. I'm a very family girl, I miss them very much."

Marianela Nunez started dancing at three and three years later decided to be a ballerina. "I don t know why, I had never even seen a ballet but I knew this is what I wanted to do". At 8 Nunez was accepted into the prestigious Teatro Colon Ballet School and after 6 years was taken into the company as its youngest ever ballerina. "I was only 14 and I enjoyed the attention but luckily I was too young to understand what it all really meant. And there was no chance of getting big headed, my brothers would never have let me."

In 1997 she joined the Royal Ballet Upper School, "I was offered a contract for the company", she explains, "but it's illegal to work here before you re 16 so I studied for a year". And when she joined the Royal Ballet in 1998, it was the best, and the worst, time in her life. "My little world was turned completely upside down. I had withdrawal symptoms from everything back home. Even though I was so glad to be back in the theatre, it wasn't easy. I knew no-one and had no idea how I was going to get my chance to rise through the ranks. Also after being a ballerina in my first job in Buenos Aires I was in the back row of the corps de ballet for the first time in my life. They used to shout at me in rehearsals all the time stay in line, but I never could. Then they'd shout, get your leg down like everybody else, when I had spent years trying to get my leg in arabesque higher and higher on stage. It's all in my diary, which I've kept for years. The only thing missing so far is juicy boyfriend stories, so probably nobody will publish them yet." Then, in January 2001 Nunez was chosen to stand in for Darcey Bussell who was expecting her first baby, for three performances as the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker, and later in the year she scored an unexpected triumph when she replaced an indisposed Leanne Benjamin as Kitri in Don Quixote. During her first year in the Royal Ballet, Nunez went straight from lowly corps de ballet to First Soloist, just one step away from Principal Dancer.

"This summer is a big season for me", she admits. "It's going to be great doing Don Quixote, I just love that ballet, and I get to dance with Carlos twice in Don Q and twice in Coppelia". The prospect brings a certain sparkle to her eyes. "If I don't enjoy these next few weeks, there's something seriously wrong with me. Life's almost too good for me at the moment, except for lack of boys."

"I just love being on stage doing it", she adds. "When I have a night off I hate going out of the stage door when everyone else is going to work. People look at me a bit oddly, perhaps they think I hang around a bit in case anyone is taken ill." We should be so lucky.