Adam Cooper

Adam Cooper is an English dancer, performer, and choreographer born on 22 July 1971 in Tooting, London. His father was a musician and his mother a social worker. He has an older brother, Simon Cooper, who is also a dancer; the two trained together from an early age, studying tap and ballet at the Jean Winkler School of Dance in Tooting, playing musical instruments, and singing in a choir. At eleven, Cooper earned a place at ArtsEd, a specialist performing arts school in London, where his training encompassed classical ballet, character, modern, tap, jazz, and contemporary dance, alongside singing, acting, and stage combat. Upon completing his secondary education there at sixteen, he was accepted into the Royal Ballet Upper School, giving his graduation performance in the lead role of Young Man in Ashton's The Two Pigeons.

Cooper joined the Royal Ballet in 1989 and advanced rapidly through its ranks, becoming First Artist and Soloist in 1991, First Soloist in 1993, and Principal Dancer in 1994. During his time with the company he worked extensively with choreographers Kenneth MacMillan and William Tuckett, partnering leading ballerinas including Sylvie Guillem and Darcey Bussell. He also performed works by George Balanchine, William Forsythe, Christopher Wheeldon, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Fokine, Bronislava Nijinska, Ashley Page, and Matthew Hart, earning recognition for his work in classical, dramatic, and contemporary ballet repertoire. He left the Royal Ballet in 1997 to pursue freelance opportunities.

In 1995, choreographer Matthew Bourne recruited Cooper to join Adventures in Motion Pictures — since renamed New Adventures — for a radically reinterpreted production of Swan Lake. Cooper collaborated with Bourne in developing the production's foundational Swan movement vocabulary and contributed to its choreography. He performed the dual role of Swan/Stranger, the contemporary analog of the white and black swan from the classic ballet, to international acclaim. For that role he received the Time Out Award in 1995, the Evening Standard Dance Award in 1997, and the 1999 Astaire Award for Best Dancer. A DVD recording of the production with Cooper and the original cast was released in 1996. Excerpts from the show appeared at the 1998 Royal Variety Performance, at which Cooper reprised the Swan/Stranger role for a television audience. The production transferred to Broadway, where Cooper appeared in 1998, and his performance earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical at the 53rd Tony Awards in 1999. In 2000, Cooper appeared briefly in the film Billy Elliot as the adult version of the title character, seen performing the role of the Swan. He returned to the Swan/Stranger role in 2003 when the company toured Japan. His performance in the film and on the Swan Lake DVD later inspired Liam Mower, then playing Billy Elliot in the West End stage production, to join New Adventures.

Also in 1997, Bourne invited Cooper to participate in the early development of AMP's next production, Cinderella, set in London during the Blitz and using the Prokofiev score from the classic version. Cooper helped create and performed the role of the Pilot — the Prince analog — in the initial 1997 London run, as well as the role of the Angel, opposite Sarah Wildor in the title role. The production was also staged in Los Angeles in 1999.

Cooper married Sarah Wildor in 2000. Wildor had been a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet and subsequently became an Olivier-nominated actress. The couple have two children: a daughter born in 2008 and a son.

Cooper's freelance career as both dancer and choreographer has been extensive. In 1998 he choreographed Just Scratching the Surface for Scottish Ballet and performed the role of Hoffmann in that company's production of Tales of Hoffmann. He has appeared as a guest artist with the Royal Ballet in lead roles including Romeo and Juliet, Ondine, and Onegin. In 2002 he created the role of Badger in William Tuckett's The Wind in the Willows, and in 2004 he created the title role in Tuckett's The Soldier's Tale, which he reprised in 2005 and performed in Japan in 2009 and 2015. Cooper and Wildor presented a tribute to Sir Kenneth MacMillan at Exeter in 2002 and in Japan the same year, and the Adam Cooper Company represented the United Kingdom at the Washington International Ballet Festival in 2003, performing a revival of MacMillan's Sea of Troubles. In 2005, Cooper directed, choreographed, and performed the lead role of Viscomte de Valmont in his own production of Les Liaisons dangereuses, co-directed and designed by Lez Brotherston, with a cast that included Simon Cooper and Sarah Wildor. The production premiered in Japan before a summer season at Sadler's Wells. In 2009 he joined Russell Maliphant to perform in Maliphant's 2:4:10 contemporary dance program, an evening of works marking Maliphant's tenth year as a choreographer.

Cooper's musical theatre work began in 2002 when he served as both choreographer and lead performer, playing Junior Dolan, in a production of On Your Toes at Leicester Haymarket. The show transferred to the Royal Festival Hall in London in 2003, with Wildor joining the cast as Vera Baronova, and toured Japan in 2004. For his work on the production Cooper received the Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best Choreography and Most Popular Dancer. Also in 2002, he provided choreography for the Swedish production of Garbo — the Musical. In 2004 he played the lead role of Don Lockwood and served as choreographer for Paul Kerryson's Singin' in the Rain at Sadler's Wells Theatre and Leicester Haymarket, earning a nomination for the Critics' Circle Award for Choreography of a Musical. That same year he choreographed Grand Hotel for the Donmar Warehouse; the production won the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Musical Production at the 2005 Olivier Awards, and Cooper received a nomination for Best Choreographer. In 2005, Cooper and Wildor performed the two-person play Wallflowering at the Seven Oaks Playhouse, a piece combining dialogue with ballroom dancing. Cooper subsequently designed the choreography for a revival of Promises, Promises at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre.