Indian Summer is a love story.”For Irek Mukhamedov, the price of Pampers and powdered milk was not the only culture-shock he experienced on starting work at Covent Garden “I thought at first that ballet is not for men in the West. This is one of my crusades as a gay man and a gay artist, I want people to start seeing that gay life is normal, it’s ordinary, that it’s not John Inman. We’re trying to show the gay world as it really is – as a normal thing instead of a weird, kinky strange business. It’s the love story of an odd couple.”For those who choose not to watch the film because it’s about a gay dancer and Aids – it’s their loss I’m not prepared to pander to those people They are the ones behind the times. You have to, your body pays the mortgage.”But for actor Antony Sher, a staunch supporter of the Terrence Higgins and Lighthouse Trusts, the significance of Indian Summer – in which he plays the therapist who falls for his client – transcends its acceptability (or otherwise) within the dance world “Tonio is a gorgeous young dancer,” he says “I’m an older man, and a fish out of water in the theatre.

“You put up with pain only to improve yourself and do everything possible to avoid the pain of injury. “I gave up my life and career in Russia five years ago for the sake of my unborn baby,” he says. “I risked losing everything to secure a future for Sasha.” He now lives in Putney, where his wife Masha is expecting their second child in the new year.Northern Ballet Theatre’s Daniel Deandrade, eight years married to Pamela and the father of three children, has a more pragmatic answer to Sherman’s poetic understanding of a dancer’s lot “A ballet dancer is a worker as well as an artist,” he says. The only exit from that disease is death.”After a performance,” he adds, “your feet feel squeezed, your legs hurt and maybe your bottom is sore, but that is part of feeling proud of yourself – maybe you did a good show.”Mukhamedov is the epitome of the sweat-and-guts approach to dance. Before joining the Royal, he achieved international fame with the Bolshoi Ballet, imbuing roles such as Spartacus or Ivan the Terrible with a virile intensity of devastating force And his commitment to his family is equally impassioned. I see Aids as an intensification of the truth of their existence.”"Ridiculous,” is Irek Mukhamedov’s curt response “You cannot compare any pain in ballet with Aids.

The truth is that most people with Aids are put under extreme personal and professional pressure to hide the fact. But dancers are on public view and cannot disguise their illness. What has been lost today is that contribution of the brilliance and courage of gay dancers Theirs is a life spent coping with injury and pain. “But the courage of coping with the suffering of Aids brings a new element into dance. This film won’t help.”So why support the stereotype? “It’s considered a stereotype too that all male dressers are gay. But in my experience, in both film and theatre, every single dresser I’ve known was gay The dance world is the same.”Or rather, it was.

This century’s two most famous dancers – Nijinsky and Nureyev – were both homosexual and became as famous for their sex lives as for their stage careers. And certainly, in the 1940s, when our own ballet tradition came of age, homosexual dancers were in the ascendant – the straight ones having been drafted into the army But times have changed. Why promote the image of the gay dancer today?”I am not promoting homosexuality above heterosexuality,” insists Sherman. As the hero of Sherman’s gay mission, he is surprised to learn that the cutting edge of British male dance is actually married to women and not to each other.”As I see it,” he remarks, “dance is an exclusive pastime.

A lot of people think it is a load of camp nonsense and won’t go to see it. Then he adds with commendable fraternal loyalty, “There’s nothing wrong with Adam doing Swan Lake. You can have male swans, you know.”As for Indian Summer, the lead role of Aids victim Tonio – “a dancer of exceptional talent” – eventually went to 28-year-old Jason Flemyng, a non-dancer who compounded his lack of Terpsichorean skill by breaking his toe on the day before shooting. “It’s hard enough to convince the public we’re ordinary people as it is,” says Cooper, who enjoys a longterm relationship with fellow dancer Antonia Botten. And when I come on strong in black leather trousers, it’s OK if some men in the audience wet themselves – as long as the women do too.”Rambert Dance Company’s Simon Cooper, younger brother of Adam, also finds Indian Summer’s proposition depressing.