One of Will Kemp’s many acting opportunities was in the 2008 dance film “Step Up 2: The Streets” — an opportunity he landed partly because of his extensive dance background. In fact, Kemp’s first career was in ballet.
British-born Kemp began ballet classes at age 9, according to Hallmark, before he eventually attended London’s prestigious Royal Ballet School. According to Backstage, after graduating in 1995, he joined the Adventures in Motion Pictures (AMP) dance company under famed choreographer Matthew Bourne, known for his avant-garde productions experimenting with traditional gender roles. Kemp said he worked with Royal’s principal dancer, Adam Cooper, who joined AMP at the same time. The two dancers shared the starring role of the Swan in Bourne’s all-male “Swan Lake.” Kemp played the part on and off for four years, both in the U.K. and on Broadway. The head of Paramount Studios, Sherry Lansing, attended one of his performances and was so taken with him that she dubbed him “the James Dean of Ballet.”
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Kemp is grateful to his parents for his ballet career. “There was a period when I wanted to stop dancing for a number of reasons but they said they had paid for the rest of the month, so I had to keep going,” Kemp told The Grace Tales, explaining that he decided he still loved dancing by month’s end. “Thank goodness they didn’t just let me just stop on an adolescent whim.”
