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Adam Cooper is the ballet wunderkind who's had the critics clutching for superlatives and been described as the hippest male dancer since Baryshnikov. Now he's returning to Scotland to reprise his acclaimed stage performance in the national company's Tales of Hoffman
ADAM COOPER is a very fine swan indeed. He simply looks better, jumps higher and lands more gracefully than almost any other 28-year- old on earth. Heads spin as he materialises in the foyer of a Glasgow hotel. Foyerism. It beats voyeurism any day. For Britain's leading man of dance is blond and beautiful, even after a day of sweating profusely in Scottish Ballet's rehearsal rooms, toting ballerinas around and flexing the finely-toned pectorals that sit so neatly above the sexiest six-pack in the business. We sink into a sybaritic sofa and Cooper stretches wearily.
Is he in pain? "Oh God, yes," he sighs, extending long legs encased in cream cargo pants. Pain? It goes with the territory. Today it's ankles and knees, plus a bit of back from the lifting. So what did he get up to today? "Don't ask," he replies, brushing his floppy fringe out of his eyes. Suffice to say he has danced the whole of the danse macabre that is Tales of Hoffmann - in which he plays the eponymous poet - many times over. And he has done ballet class and stuff. So is his body a temple? "Far from it," he explodes. He has been known to take a drink, smoke the odd cigarette or three and play a mean game of snooker. "I love dancing, but, hey, I can live without it," he says.
"It's a hell of a career when you think about it, though," murmurs the golden boy of ballet. The worst part is having to maintain a constant standard of excellence now that he is a freelance, after flying the coop of the Royal Ballet and stretching his wings in Adventures in Motion Pictures' famous, all-male Swan Lake. He may be the hippest male dancer since Baryshnikov, but he is conscious that all eyes are upon him. Every time he turns up at the front door of a new company as a guest artist they expect him to be, predictably, another Baryshnikov....