Steven Heathcote, National Portrait Gallery

Steven Heathcote AM (b. 1964), dancer, was a principal artist with the Australian Ballet between 1987 and 2007. Heathcote took up dancing after seeing a production of The Nutcracker as a schoolboy. After training in Perth and at the Australian Ballet School, he joined the Australian Ballet in 1983. From the late 1980s he made guest appearances with companies including the Kirov Ballet, the American Ballet Theatre, the Birmingham Royal Ballet, the Cuban National Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, the Kiev Ballet and the Latvian National Ballet. Various top Australian choreographers created parts around him, including Graeme Murphy (The Nutcracker, Swan Lake), Stephen Page (Alchemy, Totem), Natalie Weir (Mirror Mirror) and Stanton Welch (Madame Butterfly, Corroboree, Cinderella). Heathcote has three Helpmann Awards and two Mo Awards. Made a Member of the Order of Australia for his services to dance in 1991, he later won three Helpmann awards and a Mo award for Best Male Dancer of the Year. Since his retirement as a dancer in 2007, he has taken up teaching as well as character roles.

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Julian Kingma 2008
© Julian Kingma

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