Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Belotserkovsky, Ukraine-born principal dancers with the American Ballet Theater, are in their 19th-floor condo near Manhattan's Lincoln Center, recalling a recent performance of The Taming of the Shrew that left Maxim, 28, drained. "We came home and Irina was so excited. I was exhausted," he says.

"Exhausted," Irina, 27, concurs.

"My shirt was all wet," Maxim continues. "I was dead. I gave everything to this performance."

What's most striking: He wasn't even dancing—just rooting for his wife from the wings. "If one of us is onstage and the other not," says Irina, "I'm really nervous. It's the worst." Indeed, such is their all-consuming, almost telepathic pas de deux through life that the couple—who met as kids in Kiev, fell in love a decade later and married in 1993—are at their best when onstage together. "With another partner I feel incomplete," says Maxim. "It's so simple with Irina. I can close my eyes and know exactly what she wants. We have natural chemistry."

The ABT—once home to the classic couplings of Ivan Nagy-Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov-Gelsey Kirkland—is putting that chemistry to good use. In the fall season the pair has danced duets from The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake; in the spring, they'll perform together at the Metropolitan Opera House in six full-length productions, including Giselle, The Merry Widow and Don Quixote. "People love that they're
married," says artistic director Kevin McKenzie. Affirms New York Times critic Anna Kisselgoff: "They form as a partnership a very glamorous couple. They're world-class." The pair are taking their new stature in stride. "It's not quite like getting the Oscar," says Maxim, "but it opens doors."

They've earned it with a work ethic that's more dervish than diva. They rehearse to exhaustion 10 hours a day, six days a week, dissect their duets after the curtain falls and view scores of their own taped pieces at home. "Max and Irina," says assistant artistic director David Richardson, "constantly look for what's wrong and how to fix it. They don't bask in what's good." "Irina is so intense and nervous, she so wants to excel," McKenzie says. "Max is a bit looser." ABT ballerina Susan Jaffe calls them "passionate and extremely single-minded." Small wonder neither can imagine an out-of-faith marriage. "Ballet is life," says Irina. "You can't separate your job from your life."

Ballet took center stage early on. Both only children, Irina and Maxim grew up minutes apart in Kiev. Olga Dvorovenko, 54, was a renowned ballet dancer; her husband, Vladimir, 53, danced with a well-traveled folk troupe. Mark Belotserkovsky, 66, was an architect and engineer; his late wife, Galina, also worked as an engineer. Their kids met in 1982 at the state-run Kiev Ballet School. Irina was 10, Max a year older. Adversity—90-minute commutes, 12-hour days, freezing studios—forged a strong bond. "You have to be crazy—you sweat, you're full of pain," says Maxim of the rigorous training. Recalls Irina: "We never had a childhood, we never played."

Instead, she dreamed of finding her "prince"—a soulmate to partner her in class, at competitions, in love. Though there was a mutual attraction, Maxim was off-limits, frequently paired with the daughter of one of his teachers. "I think he wanted Maxim to be her husband," Olga says. "Irina and I desperately wanted to dance together," Maxim remembers. "We were like Romeo and Juliet." Irina was fatalistic: "I didn't push. I just felt, 'One perfect day it's going to happen.' "

It did, in 1993, when Irina and Maxim were both with the Kiev Ballet and she picked him as her partner for a U.S. tour with another dance troupe. Destiny—and double occupancy—were on their side: To cut costs the longtime friends were told to room together. They discovered romance on the road-adagio. "The first few weeks we didn't react," Irina says. "He did not seduce me, I did not seduce him. It happened smoothly." And deeply. "I found," says Maxim, "the other half of my heart."

But their love was mixed with sorrow: In late '92 Maxim's mother, whose dream was to see her son dance in the West, had died of cancer at 53. A year later the shaken lovers wed. While Irina danced in a competition in the summer of 1994, Maxim set out for New York City to pursue his dream of landing a job with an American company; he was discovered in a dance class by ABT's McKenzie. By November of that year the couple had begun a new life in New York (Irina didn't join ABT until 1996).

Maxim and Irina say they have no close confidants in the high-strung, competitive ballet scene. "They insulate each other from the company," saysjaffe. "Very seldom do you see one without the other." To unwind they take strolls, hang out with their nondancing Russian and American friends, rent Russian movies and speak the mother tongue to Baronchik, their Siberian cat. They also visit Irina's parents, dance teachers who have lived in Brooklyn since 1996. They most miss their favorite mentors from the Kiev Ballet. "They cared about us like second parents," says Irina. "We get a little bit homesick. Not too much."

They make time for acupuncture, massage and saunas to offset the beating their bodies take. "You feel like a used car," Maxim says. They also share a quick, teasing humor to defuse stress, and Irina paints to relax. But if Maxim vents, that's her cue to clean. "I tell her, 'I'm going to explode, so you' "—he mimics her vacuuming, dusting, ignoring him—" 'do your business and just pretend to listen.' " The teamwork is just as good at home as onstage. "Everything I need to share," says Irina, "I have the right person to share it with." It is, her prince agrees, "a perfect partnership."