Monica Loughman

Monica Loughman is an Irish ballet dancer, writer, and television personality. She has featured on Ballet Chancers, a 2008 television series which saw her attempt to train six young people, schooled in hip hop, to appreciate the art of ballet. Loughman has also co-written a book on her experiences as an Irish child in Russia. She has appeared in numerous publications including the Meath Chronicle, The Sunday Business Post and Woman's Way, as well as numerous other television shows such as The Panel, The Podge and Rodge Show, Tubridy Tonight, The Late Late Show many in February 2007.

Loughman left Ireland at the age of fourteen for Perm State Ballet in Russia, becoming one of the few Westerners to dance for the prestigious Perm State Theatre of Opera and Ballet. Monica Loughman is now best known in Ireland for establishing a National ballet company. Ireland was one of the only countries in the world (apart from Liechtenstein) that did not have a full-time professional ballet company. She has created a Company by training indigenous dancers and hiring the support of stars of Russian ballet. Her steady work of ten years, starting with ballet schools, then building a youth company (Irish Youth Russian Ballet) and finally incorporating Monica Loughman Ballet is an inspiration to the international ballet and was featured in the June edition of Dance Europe magazine .

Her company is now Ireland's largest ballet company growing its audience at 300% annually. It has a roster of over 50 extraordinary Irish national ballet dancers and an impressive classical repertoire including The Nutcracker, Vivaldi Seasons, Giselle and La Sylphide, Monica Loughman Ballet is committed to staging classical main scale ballet throughout Ireland and nurturing a new generation of dancers, choreographers and audiences. In a milestone for her, the Irish Arts Council funded a tour of The Nutcracker to theatres throughout Ireland in 2013.

Loughman has co-written a book, The Irish Ballerina, with County Meath-based author, Jean Harrington, who helped the former Dublin prostitute Martina Keogh write her story in Survivor. Published in 2004 by Maverick House Publishers, the book discusses her childhood Russian experiences performing ballet. The book was reviewed in The Meath Chronicle and The Sunday Business Post and Loughman was interviewed for the magazine Woman's Way in December 2004.

On 21 September 2006, Loughman appeared on Dustin's Daily News. Loughman appeared on the twenty-fourth episode of the third season of The Podge and Rodge Show, alongside the celebrity solicitor Gerald Kean on 11 February 2007. On 15 February 2007, she appeared on young chat programme, The Cafe, alongside celebrity weatherman Dáithí Ó Sé and Luan Parle. On 17 February 2007, Loughman appeared on the primetime chat show, Tubridy Tonight, alongside Bill O'Herlihy, Fionnula Flanagan and The Waterboys. On 4 December 2008, Loughman resurrected her sequence of guest appearances when she appeared on The Panel alongside the journalist Niall Stanage.

In 2014 Loughman appeared in the Channel 4 series Big Ballet with Wayne Sleep as she worked with a troupe of plus-size amateur dancers to realise their dream of dancing Swan Lake.