Ballet isn’t the first method of control that springs to mind when one contemplates how to curb the unruly youth of today, but according to principal ballet dancers Agnes Oaks and Thomas Edur, the discipline required to make it in their field could do a whole lot of good for the troubled youngsters of the X-Factor generation.

Thomas (both Thomas and Agnes were cagey about their ages, by the way) believes that many young people today simply harbour the desire to be famous. As an end in itself.

"However, this'll get you nowhere," he says. "It takes hard work and discipline and the one thing classical ballet is, is really hard!"

Naturally, he's keen to point out that while ballet is very competitive, it is, of course, non-violent.

"Madonna even trained as a ballet dancer but turned to pop music," he says.

Both Agnes and Thomas have been dancing for many years and were introduced to the discipline early in Estonia, from where they both hail.

From the age of four Thomas’ mother took him to see ballet shows. "It was her dream, her escapism," Thomas says.

"In those days the Soviet world was a very different world. Ballet dancers were more famous then than footballers are today."

Agnes, too, has her mother to thank for her entry into the world of tutus. It was only at the age of eleven, after she was already well into training, when Agnes realized that ballet might hold the key to her dreams too.

Yet even though she had the desire, and got top grades in her dancing exams, she still didn’t feel secure with her own abilities for a long time.

She recalls: "We were never made to feel that we were really good. In training, we were always told that we could do better, and that we had to push ourselves". It takes a combination of very hard work and conditioning, and a genetic predisposition towards the ideal ‘ballet body’. Indeed, "it’s all about being correctly proportioned," says Thomas, "and having the correct muscle and ligament structures".

It’s difficult to imagine that either Agnes or Thomas could feel any insecurity about their abilities now. They’ve been with their current company since 1990 and say it "feels like home".

The current production, Sleeping Beauty, is a particular challenge for the lead roles.

"It’s known as one of the most classically technical ballets," says Agnes. "Physically for the female lead it’s very difficult. It requires clean technique; perfection."

Her favourite scene is one in which Aurora dances with four cavaliers.

"It’s a nerve-racking scene because it’s all about balance and timing and it needs to fit precisely with the music," she explains. Thomas adds that working hard, to make a scene look easy, can sometimes undo the magic.

"If something looks too easy," he says, "then the audience thinks: ‘well what’s so special about that?’ The art of ballet is all about physical and emotional balancing".

Agnes tells me about the emotional progression of her character Aurora from a naïve child in Act One, to blossoming maturity in Act Three. "The feeling of elation you get when you know that you’ve performed well is unbelievable," she says.

Sleeping Beauty is at the New Theatre, Oxford, from Wednesday to Saturday. For further details, call 0870 606 3500.