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Cooper Premieres Dance Liaisons at Sadler’s WellsDate: 10 March 2005
Former Royal Ballet principal Adam Cooper (pictured) returns to Sadler’s Wells this summer with the UK premiere of a new dance version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The first offering from the star’s own company, Adam Cooper Productions, the production had its world premiere in Tokyo in January and has just completed a tour of Japan. It will have a limited run of 26 performances only at Sadler’s Wells from 26 July to 14 August 2005 (previews from 21 July).
Choderlos de Laclos' 1782 novel about the sexually fuelled power struggles of the French aristocracy was adapted as a stage play by Christoper Hampton for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1985. That production, starring Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan, transferred to Broadway and won numerous awards including the Olivier for Best New Play. In 1988, the piece was famously made into the Oscar-winning Hollywood film Dangerous Liaisons, with John Malkovich and Glenn Close as the scheming Vicomte de Valmont and Marquise de Merteuil and Michelle Pfeiffer as Valmont's virtuous conquest Madame de Tourvel. The play was last seen in the West End in December 2003 in a short-lived revival at the Playhouse.
In this new dance version, Cooper plays Valmont. Though further casting has yet to be confirmed for the UK dates, in Japan, Cooper's real-life wife and fellow former Royal Ballet principal Sarah Wildor (Contact, On Your Toes) played Madame de Tourvel with Sarah Barron as Marquise de Merteuil. Cooper has also choreographed the piece and co-directed it along with its designer Lez Brotherston.
Outside of the ballet world, Cooper rose to popular prominence as the lead Swan in Matthew Bourne's male Swan Lake for Adventures in Motion Pictures, which won him the Time Out and Evening Standard Awards for Best Dance Performance. On film, he appeared briefly as the adult Billy - again playing the Swan - in 2000’s Billy Elliot.
More recently, Cooper has had success in musical theatre in On Your Toes and last year’s Singin' in the Rain, both of which he choreographed and starred in, and this year’s Grand Hotel at the Donmar, for which he was nominated for both Olivier and Whatsonstage.com Awards for his choreography.
NOTE: Tickets for Les Liaisons Dangereuses go on sale at the Sadler’s Wells box office tomorrow, Friday 11 March 2005.
- by Terri Paddock
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