LORD OF THE DANCE
Juliette Hughes
Australian Ballet star Steven Heathcote celebrates a love of family, faith and dance.
Steven Heathcote is hungry. It’s 3 pm and he hasn’t eaten lunch
yet because he and the rest of the cast of the Australian Ballet’s
new production of Swan Lake have just done a complete run-through. So
we meet in the canteen and as we talk he eats, neatly and rapidly, through
a hefty pile of meat pie and mixed salads.
He is quite mature for a dancer: 37. His time with the AB spans half the life of the company, which is currently celebrating its 40th anniversary with a special production entitled Beyond 40. Part of this was a short solo piece entitled Totem, which was commissioned specially for Heathcote from Aboriginal choreographer Stephen Page, who is also the Artistic Director of the Bangarra Dance Company. A spiritual yet intensely athletic piece, Totem is ideal for Heathcote, who has always brought more than just physical technique to his work.
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‘I couldn’t dance, my body wouldn’t co-operate with me, if my spirit wasn’t guiding me through the whole experience’‚ he says. His spirit has had a firm grounding in Christianity from his earliest years: his father, a solicitor with the Crown Law Department in Western Australia (now retired), is still a lay minister with the Uniting Church, and continues to minister to several retirement villages in Perth. Twelve years ago Steven married a Catholic, Kathy Reid, also a ballet dancer. When the conversation turns to what kind of people he admires, his answer is unhesitating: ‘My wife!’ Kathy left the Australian Ballet before they married and became a flight attendant with Ansett. She worked for Ansett for 13 years before the company folded in 2001. A surprising number of ex-dancers are hired by airlines; they value the diligence, discipline and focus that are second nature to a ballet dancer. |
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‘She’s a gutsy girl’, he says, and goes on to praise his two children, Sam, nine and Mia, seven, as well. His daughter is interested in ballet ‘like all little girls are’‚ he smiles. ‘Sam couldn’t be bothered: he’s very cerebral’, says Heathcote proudly. It’s obvious that he respects the choices his family make.
His choice to become a dancer was supported warmly by his parents. When Steven was nine, his school was taken to a Western Australian Ballet production of The Nutcracker, the classic Christmas ballet with the ravishing music of Tchaikovsky. He was hooked. His mother told him that if he was still interested in six months’ time she would arrange training for him.
‘I was, and she did’, he says. His mother, he says, took great care to find out the best possible teacher, and sent him to a Cecchetti instructor. He had found a career and a passion and food for the soul all at once. Dancing, says Heathcote, is deeply religious, deeply spiritual.
‘In many other cultures, dance is used as a means of religious expression’,
he says, and adds that this is because music has the capacity to raise
people’s spirits and stir their hearts.
‘For me the most wonderful thing is when I see music coming out of
dancers’ bodies’.
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The Czech-born choreographer, Jiri Kylian, especially
inspires him. ‘For me, his work is probably the closest thing
to divine inspiration I’ve ever seen’, he says. ‘He’s
such a musician that he knows how to transfer that onto the dancer’s
body, so that he’s moulding with movement. The dancer’s
body is the clay or the paint, of the artist.’ Dance is not just about classical ballet, either, he states. When he and ballerina Miranda Coney were asked to give a talk to the final-year students of the Australian Ballet School, he reminded them of this. |
‘Among the things I said was, "You are all highly talented and highly trained dancers; you wouldn’t be here otherwise. And come the end of the year, some of you will get into the Australian Ballet and some won’t. That’s life. But what you must understand is that the Australian Ballet is not the only dance company in the world nor is classical ballet the only form of dance. It’s so wide-ranging, and no one should be less valid than the other’.
That’s the way Steven Heathcote talks: straight and unflinching about tough realities, but also courteous and encouraging. When it comes to his ultimate values, he says that he believes no one and nothing can survive without integrity. He says the current controversial Graeme Murphy production of Swan Lake is all about integrity and how relationships turn to tragedy without it. He speaks with all the passion of a person who knows what commitment is about.
It follows then, that family is supremely important to Steven Heathcote, which might surprise some who think of ballet dancers as being so wrapped up in their careers that they don’t make time for family. Not this dancer, not this family.
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