Adam Cooper may have been a principal dancer at one of the world’s most famous ballet companies, but when he first started working with the Royal Ballet in the 1990s, Tabard hears he went out of his way to deny he had anything to do with it. According to the dancer turned musical theatre star, he struggled somewhat to tell people that his line of work was as a ballet dancer, preferring instead to tell interested parties he was an actor or a musician.
And Tabard hears that this denial began when Cooper was a little lad just starting out, when he and his brother were just a few years old.
He says: “We did not tell anyone we did it. People knew we tap danced as that was acceptable, but no one knew we did ballet. Even when I was in the Royal Ballet for the first three or four years, if someone asked me what I did for a living, I would say actor or musician. I would rather not have to get into it. But after a while I was like, sod this, start being proud of what you are doing.”
Tabard is glad to hear that Cooper finally discovered a bit of pride in his ballet dancing, but also hears his profession was becoming a little hard to hide, anyway. The dancer admits that, during his time with the ballet company, there were a lot more “butch male dancers”. “So the Royal Ballet made a bit of a thing about it - making us do photo shoots in leathers. And it became impossible to say I was anything else,” he says. Now Tabard is no expert, but do butch and leathers really go together? Sounds more like a photoshoot for the Village People.
Content is copyright © 2012 The Stage Media Company Limited unless otherwise stated.
All RSS feeds are published for personal, non-commercial use. (What’s RSS?)
