Adam Cooper: Royal Ballet's prince for the nineties.

In Kenneth MacMillan's preposterously overwrought, full-length Mayerling, which American audiences haven't seen since the Royal Ballet's last visit to the Metropolitan Opera House, the leading male dancer must portray states of wild mental, sexual, and political anguish while seeming to be possessed of true nobility. This ballet is, after all, the story of Prince Rudolf, son of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria and heir to the throne. He was also a manic-depressive (obsessed with guns, death, and suicide), a drug addict, and a syphilitic. His love affair with the teenaged Mary Vetsera ended in a death pact. This shocking event shook up the Hapsburg empire and gave rise, through novels and films, to endless romantic speculations as to the true nature of the double suicide.

When Mayerling (set to the swooning music of Liszt) premiered at the Royal in 1978, David Wall was Rudolf and Lynn Seymour was Vetsera. When the ballet was last done at the Met, there was no Wall or Seymour. Instead, Adam Cooper, a then-promoted Royal Ballet principal, portrayed Rudolf while Gillian Revie danced Vetsera.

Cooper proved entirely up to the drastic demands of his role. With his young-jock demeanor and striking good looks, he offered dancing and acting at once persuasively old world and thrillingly over the edge. Indeed, Cooper is one of the Royal's aggressive new generation - among them William Trevitt, Tetsuya Kumakawa, Errol Pickford, and Stuart Cassidy - who are changing the look of this formerly prim and proper company. A refreshing sense of nowness has infiltrated its profile and, no doubt thanks to director Anthony Dowell, the Royal seems to emit an air of inspired sassiness and passion.

In a talk during a visit to New York City, Cooper instantly confesses that the hysterical traits of Rudolf are far from his own.

"It's really not me at all," he says with a laugh. "I mean, here I am beating my wife on our wedding night - raping her - behaving in the most extreme manner in all those mad pas de deux. But, believe me, I'm a very different sort of chap. Of course, some of it must come from within; the violence must exist somewhere in me and, it's true, I love doing depraved creatures. But I'm quite different."

Since his debut in 1989, Cooper has been dancing a wide variety of roles with the Royal - from the Prince in Swan Lake to William Forsythe's wild and witty Herman Schmerman, partnering Sylvie Guillem. His first part was as the King of the South in MacMillan's The Prince of the Pagodas, and he has danced Balanchine's Agon, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, and Symphony in C. During the 1991-92 season he was seen as both Romeo and Tybalt in MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet and as Lescaut in Manon. Other highly diversified roles have filled a career that is clearly destined for major attention.

Cooper was born in London on July 22, 1971. His father is a musician, his mother a social worker. His brother, Simon, one year older, is currently with Rambert Dance Company.

"My parents are separated - have been for four years now," says Cooper. "My father taught music and conducted choirs in which my brother and I sang throughout our childhoods. My mother's job is dealing with problem teenagers. Anyway, my parents weren't really made for each other. They stuck it out for us, really. Then, when Simon and I decided to leave home, they decided to end the charade.

"I was quite a naughty little boy. I liked getting into trouble. I'd fiddle with things and break things. I had too much energy. And I was always fighting with my brother. It was day and night - always fighting. But we basically had quite a happy childhood. And I loved all the music - singing in the choir. My dad also loved popular music, so he would play in a dinner-dance band occasionally. I remember being his drummer once when I was eight. He couldn't get anybody else on short notice. It was great!"

As a multifaceted musician, and to earn extra money, Cooper's father also served as pianist for the local dance school on Saturdays. Adam and Simon went along and were so taken with "some end-of-term performances" that they wanted to start dance lessons themselves. Adam was five and Simon was six. Their parents did not object; in fact, they supported the idea. The brothers Cooper started with tap. Tap gave way to ballet lessons, and upon reaching the ages of eleven and twelve the brothers entered the Arts Educational School.

"This school was a bit like the Royal Ballet School but much more rounded," Cooper says. "That is, we studied every kind of dancing but also academics. We were trained in acting, music, and art. It wasn't all ballet - and that was good, because it would have been quite limiting."

When the brothers turned sixteen and seventeen, they auditioned for the Royal Ballet School and both were accepted. This did not mean that they were on the best of terms.

"From the age of twelve onward, Simon and I sort of fell out, because we were very competitive. I mean, the competition was fierce. We were in ballet class every single day for three years competing! It was too much. So we hardly ever spoke. Physically we're quite similar. Facially not at all. But as dancers we're very similar."

At the Royal Ballet School, Adam Cooper began distinguishing himself both as student and nascent choreographer. He won a choreographic competition in his first year at age seventeen. The music was Three Movements for String Quartet, by Stravinsky. In his second year he was invited to participate in the Prix de Lausanne, which has a special choreographic prize. But he was "having a rough patch" in choreography at the time, so instead of dancing his own choreography, he performed "a really fun solo" that Royal principal Wayne Eagling had choreographed for him to be danced in sneakers, jeans, and T-shirt.

"Well, I won the Professional Level prize - a dancing prize - which really shocked the Royal Ballet," Cooper recalls. "They hadn't really looked at me too carefully as a dancer. That year, I was asked to dance the lead in Ashton's Two Pigeons for the school performance, and all during rehearsals I saw Kenneth MacMillan sort of watching at the door. I knew I was being observed. Then, on the last day of the school term, I did Two Pigeons at the opera house.

"The way you get into the company at the Royal is a bit bizarre. People sort of hang around the studio, waiting to hear whether they got into the Royal Ballet or the Sadler's Wells [now Birmingham] Royal Ballet. My brother, myself, and all the rest of our class were sort of waiting around.

"Finally, we were called into a huge room by Dame Merle Park, who is the director of the Royal Ballet School. She announced the names of who had gotten into which company. She said, `So and so has gotten into the Royal Ballet and so and so has gotten into the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet. Thank you very much.' And she marched out. All the people who had gotten into a company were standing there, and all the people who hadn't gotten into a company were also standing there - among them was my brother!

"It was terrible. I mean, people were rushing up to me to congratulate me, and I looked over to where Simon was standing, and there was this figure, absolutely shattered. I don't think I had the guts to go over and say anything to him. It would have made it worse. So I didn't say a word to him. It was awful. Luckily, two weeks later, he auditioned for the English National Ballet and got in. Now, however, he's dancing with the Rambert company."

Adam Cooper's entry into the Royal Ballet in September 1989 produced mixed emotions in him. As he put it, there were aspects of the company that were the same as they had been thirty years ago, when "Madame [Ninette de Valois] was still roaming the halls." Too, he feels a certain remoteness in the company's general atmosphere.

Speaking of his director, Anthony Dowell, Cooper said, "I don't know him all that well. He's not very outgoing as a person. He keeps to himself a lot. He doesn't really mingle with the dancers. He's a loner. The only time he's outgoing toward us is when he is dancing himself; then he's one of us - and he likes that. Actually, he's given me so much! I have great admiration for him."

But it was MacMillan who made the greatest impression on him. "MacMillan died suddenly in 1992. We were all quite devastated, because he was still quite active despite a heart attack and a stroke. I mean, I often wondered how this thin, tiny, fragile man ever created all those huge ballets.

"Working with him was amazing. He couldn't really demonstrate steps to you. Still, he could make you know what he wanted without moving a muscle. What was also memorable was the atmosphere of his rehearsals. You could cut it with a knife. Absolutely everyone was on their best behavior - always. He had unbelievable power. He could make you feel this small just by looking at you. Luckily, I was one of the people he was nice to. But he could be impossible. I learned a great deal from MacMillan. He was enormously helpful to me."

Now at twenty-five Cooper is in the process of forging a fuller life for himself - a life that is still relatively untouched by strife or inner turmoil. After all their competing with one another, he and Simon now share an apartment and get on very well.

Describing himself as "a very home-loving person," Cooper says he relaxes by watching films, reading books, and listening to music. His "relationship" with Royal dancer Sarah Wildor, he admits, can be a source of unavoidable tension: "We're often in a very bad mood because of the way our bodies are feeling, the way rehearsals are going. Sometimes that makes being together quite difficult."

Though he insists he won't dance after age thirty-five, dancing is what he lives for: "I love pushing my body. I love that wonderful mixture of music and movement. For me, when I'm dancing, I'm trying to express genuine feelings - through my body, through my movements. I want my movements to have meaning. Whether I'm dancing Rudolf in Mayerling or the Prince in Swan Lake, my aim is to portray feelings that will move an audience.

"It's difficult to come out of myself in everyday life, because in real life I'm really quite shy and quiet. But on the stage coming out of myself - out of my shell - is the easiest thing in the world. I've noticed that in a lot of artists. The shiest people offstage are suddenly transformed onstage. Perhaps it's because we wear makeup and costumes and there are lights covering us up. In that way it's much easier to become someone else.

"I've done a lot in my years of dancing at the Royal Ballet. Of course, I want to do more, and I'm exploring more. I'm finding out there is much going on elsewhere in dance." As at the London company Adventures in Motion Pictures; he recently danced Odette in its Swan Lake with an all-male swan corps in a sold-out run in the West End.

"Who knows what I might encounter and fall in love with in the future? It might even be conducting, which has begun to interest me more and more. For one thing, there are very few superb conductors for dance. It's a wide-open field so - who knows? Conducting may just become my career after my dancing days are over."