ROSS Cooper - dancer, choreographer, and artistic director of the recently founded Curve Foundation - is smiling. It's been a hard slog, setting up the company, bringing together the right mix of people. But he's managed it. He has recruited four highly individual stylists who share his dedication to honing technique, to pushing moves just that little bit further.
He's pleased, too, about the Scottish tour that takes the company to Aberdeen, Tobermory, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. That was another hard slog. Phoning round, trying to persuade venues to book them. ''When you're new, it's incredibly hard to get people to take you,'' he says, before sketching in how much effort went into securing even those four gigs.
You might think that, with so few Scottish dance companies active on the home scene, venues would be more enthusiastic. Still, he's determined not to lose heart. ''If you want something badly enough you'll make it happen.''
He maintains this resolutely positive attitude even after the first airing of his new piece, Diamond Dogs, at Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art. Two days earlier, one of the company sustained an arm injury, leaving the new piece one man short, and unstitching various sections of another work, Popular Songs. Instead of a full run-through, the performance was more a bits 'n' bobs sampler.
But Cooper seems to take even this disappointment in his stride. ''It all happened so late on there was no time to bring anyone else in - not that we could afford to anyway.'' As well as choreographing the current programme, he's dancing in two of the pieces because money's tight and the company can't afford him the luxury of sitting on the sidelines, directing operations.
Can it be worth it? When Cooper starts talking about his work, the sheer flood of words says it all. He sees the body as a well spring of movement, and is dogmatic about the need for dancers to take regular class, if only to warm up the muscles and prepare to work hard. It's a question of discipline and attitude: that ''if you want something badly enough'' mentality which means taking action, taking responsibility for realising your own goals, your own potential.
Despite the hurdles, the Curve Foundation has just taken to the road. To the strutting, predatory sounds of David Bowie's Jean Genie or the sugar cadences of Marilyn Monroe's I Wanna Be Loved By You, the company performs dance that acknowledges the music but isn't enslaved by it. Rather, it follows Cooper's own tune of strong, dynamic sweeps, and sudden grace notes of subversive quirkiness. A new independent talent is stepping on to our stages.
n The Curve Foundation is at the Cottier Theatre,
Glasgow, on Thursday and in Edinburgh at the Assembly Rooms on Saturday.
Mary Brennan
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