Once a year, for five years in a row, John Cooper would do something unusual when he introduced a movie at the Sundance Film Festival: He would execute a cartwheel onstage.

Cooper ended that tradition three years ago, when he turned 50. "This could get really bad when I'm up there and my arm snaps, and I'm hanging over there trying to pretend nothing's wrong," Cooper joked.

Colleagues and filmmakers say Cooper will show the same exuberance and love of independent film at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. It's Cooper's first as festival director after 20 years rising through the ranks of Robert Redford's Sundance Institute. He has implemented new programs that extend the festival across the country, while also returning the festival to its scruffy, low-budget roots.

"He's really smart, talented, engaged," said filmmaker Rory Kennedy, whose documentary short "The Fence" premieres on the festival's opening night, Thursday. "He's part of the institution. He is the institution in certain ways."

"Cooper has been a real driving force behind the direction of the film festival and the institute over the years," said Trevor Groth, who has worked with Cooper at Sundance since 1993 and took over Cooper's old job as programming director last spring. "He's grown up through the ranks of Sundance. He knows all facets of it intimately."

When Cooper first encountered the Sundance Institute, he was headed somewhere else.

In 1989, Cooper was working as an actor, dancer and singer. He had performed in and directed some plays in New York City and was a member of a close-harmony trio -- Cooper, Fike & Woods -- that played Manhattan's cabaret circuit.

"He was really the creative genius behind our comedy," said Eileen Woods, the female voice in the trio, an actor who is a former Rockette. "He did a lot of comedy songs. He played off the fact that he couldn't dance, but in fact he was a great tap dancer."

Flying from San Francisco to New York, Cooper took an overnight layover in Salt Lake City to save $200. A friend invited him to a co-worker's birthday party at The New Yorker. Many of those attending the party worked as volunteers at Sundance.

"There were 10 really fun people, and we had a really good time," Cooper recalled last week. "They said, 'You should come volunteer for the summer labs [at Sundance].' And I said, 'Sure.' Anything to get out of New York for the summer."

Cooper spent his first summer at Sundance arranging housing for the filmmakers, crews and advisers attending summer labs at Redford's Sundance resort. The next year Sundance asked him to be lab manager, a job he held for five years.

When he relocated to Los Angeles in 1990 to direct a play, the festival hired Cooper as print manager, responsible for getting film prints to the right theaters. The two-man programming department also needed help.

"They gave me a box of short films and said, 'If you can make a program out of this, then do it,' " Cooper said. The result was the festival's first short-film program, and Cooper's first experience as a film programmer.

Programming for a festival, Cooper said, "is very intuitive, because it's a mixture of academics and instinct. If you have too much training, it can get in your way."

Cooper learned on the job. He programmed documentaries and feature films. In 2003, festival director Geoff Gilmore named him programming director. Cooper also worked on the institute's online projects, its program with the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Sundance Film Festival in Tokyo.

Gilmore ended his 19-year tenure at Sundance in February to take a job in New York. Cooper's ascension to the top job ensured a continuation of the festival's principles, senior programmer David Courier said.

"Cooper's wise enough not to change what's working," Courier said. "He's more about honing what's working and getting back to what is our core definition of who we are -- which is independent cinema."

He calls Cooper "a man of big ideas." Equally important, Groth said, is that Cooper "has the guts to pull the trigger."

One big idea is the Sundance Film Festival USA, which will extend the Park City event to theaters in eight cities Jan. 28 -- Ann Arbor, Mich.; Brookline, Mass.; Brooklyn, N.Y.; Chicago; Los Angeles; Madison, Wis.; Nashville, Tenn.; and San Francisco.

"It's in keeping with the notion that the theater isn't necessarily that building we go to -- it can be anywhere," senior programmer Caroline Libresco said. "It's about how can we capture the energy of the festival, and take it to people who are just as excited but can't find their way to Park City."

Cooper also pushed the plan to start showing competition films, rather than a gala premiere, on the festival's opening night. On Thursday's inaugural night, Sundance will open with the Alan Ginsberg biographical drama "Howl" and the Afghanistan war documentary "Restrepo," both films in competition, at Park City's Eccles Center, plus a program of shorts at the Egyptian Theatre.

Another big idea is the Next program, which showcases eight micro-budgeted movies -- and demonstrates to the industry how these do-it-yourself filmmakers are finding new paths to their audiences.

One film, "One Too Many Mornings," can be pre-ordered online now and downloaded the day after its first festival screening Jan. 23. Another film, "Bass Ackwards," will be sold as a download, a DVD or on video-on-demand Feb. 1, the day after the festival ends.

"There's still going to be the films that you buy to take out theatrically, old-school" at the festival, Cooper said. "But then there's all those other films that will find these very creative ways to get their work out there. I'm interested in supporting both at the same time."

Colleagues praise Cooper's fair-mindedness, his eye for showmanship and a sense of humor that makes stressed-out festival attendees lighten up.

A Sundance tradition that's "signature Cooper," according to senior programmer Shari Frilot, is a private breakfast on the festival's final Saturday. "We [programmers] suit up, we get aprons and hats, and we make pancakes for the filmmakers," Frilot said. "It's just a way to have an ending to the festival that's warm, and it's about generosity."

"You would never know how stressed Cooper is, because he's one of the most even-keeled guys," said director Morgan Spurlock, who brought his fast-food documentary "Super Size Me" to Sundance in 2004.

Spurlock was "freaked out" at that first Sundance until Cooper told him: "Listen. Just have fun. Meet the other filmmakers, spend time with them. This whole experience is only going to happen once."

"Sundance has not been the same one year since I started doing it," Cooper said. "We're looking to discover filmmakers. That process of finding 100 a year keeps you fresh, because they're fresh."

Cooper wouldn't be above bringing back the cartwheel, though. "I've been working out," he said, "so maybe I'll crank one out this year."

Will he do it on opening night? "Redford would probably go, 'What is this kid doing? He seemed so normal in the meetings.' Maybe, as he's walking off the stage, I'll do a quick one, and he won't even notice it."

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