Friday May 2, 1997 
Adam Cooper leaps into a new category of dance fame by hanging
up his Princely slippers for the mask of the Swan--and fans respond.
By JENNIFER FISHER, Special to The Times
Adam Cooper, like most male ballet dancers, never expected critics to
call him "the sexiest Swan in the business." During his seven
years with London's famed Royal Ballet, he might reasonably have aspired
to "the best darn Prince in the business"--and indeed, he danced
the Prince in "Swan Lake" until his departure from the Royal
in March.
But now he's involved in another business--and
one that's incredibly brisk--playing the wildly popular, very male white
Swan/black Swan role in Matthew Bourne's radical reworking of "Swan
Lake," which is currently conquering Los Angeles as thoroughly as
it did London.
"It's a role I never expected to have,"
Cooper says. "It's such a crazy idea--until you've seen the show."
He is sitting in his dressing room at the
Ahmanson Theatre next to several bouquets of flowers left over from opening
night a few days before. Nearby hang his Swan costumes: the knee-length
shredded-gauze pants for his bare-chested, less-than-fragile white Swan,
and the black leather ensemble in which his dark side--a palace gate-crasher--wickedly
swans about.
Since the London premiere of "Swan Lake"
in the fall of 1995, Cooper has taken a leap in popularity much larger
than any he made as a principal dancer with the Royal. In the rush to rave
over the depth of his interpretation, one London dance writer even compared
him to Nijinsky, another dancer who captured the popular imagination with
a "creature-like" charisma.
On another front, he was snagged by Princess
Margaret at a party, Cooper says, and although no royals have been to see
the new "Swan Lake"--close-to-home royal jokes are rife--the
princess seemed "intensely interested" in the concept during
their half-hour discussion. There's no doubt about it--Cooper's nouveau-Swan
gig has helped him take off big-time.
"People started asking me for autographs
in the street, in restaurants," he says. "That never happened
before. Actually, I found it a bit embarrassing."
Although Cooper looks fierce in performance
and in photographs, his features soften offstage. A boyish 25, with just
a shade of a South London accent he's tried to lose over the years, he
laughs engagingly and constantly runs his hand over his stylishly close-cropped
head. Since the second cast dances tonight (Cooper does three or four performances
a week), he only has to be on standby in case of emergency, so he has time
to talk about how he got here.
"When I was first asked to do the show,
half of me thought it was exciting and half of me thought, 'Who's going
to take this seriously?' " he says. " 'Cause you immediately
conjure up images of men in tutus and tights, even though I knew it was
going to be nothing like that. But once we discovered the vocabulary, it
all seemed so easy--it just took on a life of its own."
As for the meaning of the Swan, Cooper has
his own interpretation--one of many, he says. "I think you're always
going to get people who think it's about a homosexual affair. They have
a real problem with the fact that the Swan is a man. It's not a man. It's
a swan. Whether it's male or female, who cares? It's a creature not a gender.
"To me the Swan is a figment of the
Prince's imagination," Cooper continues. "He sees it as a very
masculine, powerful creature who is free, whereas the Prince is locked
up in a restricted lifestyle. What their relationship is about is him making
a progression closer to the Swan's world, getting closer to what he yearns
for. The Swan is always a part of himself, the part that can never break
out into real life."
Cooper first developed his Swan in addition
to performing his Royal duties, moonlighting with Bourne's company, Adventures
in Motion Pictures. During their first short "Swan Lake" London
engagement and tour, and even during the longer sold-out West End run,
Cooper divided his time--a swan boy one night and classical repertory at
the Royal Opera House the next. For the Los Angeles run (through June 15)
he asked for a leave from the Royal, but after some stalled negotiations,
he resigned on what he hopes are good terms.
Although he progressed steadily at the Royal
Ballet (after graduating from its affiliated senior school) and he'll miss
his favorite roles--in the dramatic works of MacMillan and the cutting-edge
ballets of William Forsythe--Cooper admits to some general frustrations.
"I was tired of feeling that however
hard I worked, however much I put into a role, that I wasn't really appreciated.
In a big company, you don't get to dance that much, and there's this feeling
that you're dispensable, that there's always someone else who can do this
job. It kind of knocks you down, and you never perform at your best.
"Leaving the Royal was a bit of a risk,"
he says. "But I'd been thinking about leaving for a long time, and
this just gave me that little kick. One thing I'm sure is true, is that
you cannot be a big name or a success on your home team. All the famous
dancers today left home."
Which makes him a defector, in a way? Like
Nureyev and Baryshnikov?
"Yes," he says with a laugh, "a
defector from [traditional] ballet. Except that I still want to do ballet.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll get offers to dance classically
again."
Besides dancing, his hopes for the future
include choreography; he won a choreographic prize at 17, and has recently
made a pas de deux for a small London company. Having studied violin and
voice as he grew up, he says he eventually wants to study conducting, a
choice influenced by his musician father. The rest of his family includes
a social worker mother and a brother, Simon, who is a dancer with Ballet
Rambert who also danced the Swan role for three weeks in January, when
Cooper was injured.
While he's in Los Angeles, Cooper says, he
tends to do indoor things ("I'm not a beach person"), such as
museums, reading (crime stories) and shopping (especially clothes, which
are cheaper here than London). At home, he's just started gardening at
his recently purchased London house, where he lives with Royal Ballet first
soloist Sarah Wildor. When she comes to the Orange County Performing Arts
Center in a few weeks with the Royal, he plans to spend a fair amount of
time on the freeway.
"I feel much more in control of my career
than when I was with the Royal," Cooper says when asked if his Swan
role has changed his life. "I make the decisions now, the one thing
you can't do in a ballet company. You work your butt off 12 hours a day
sometimes and, at the end of it, you still may not be dancing the roles
that you feel you can do. Now I decide what roles to do when."
Just now he's deciding that he'll probably
go to New York, Japan and Australia with the show when and if the deals
are made. He's not thinking swan song yet; he's fastening his seat belt
for a long and pleasurable flight.
Copyright Los Angeles Times
