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Steven Heathcote

Australian ballet dancer

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 20, 2025
Entity authorityQ20090880
Source-derived summary

Steven Anthony Heathcote AM (born 16 October 1964, in Wagin, Western Australia) is a former Australian ballet dancer. Heathcote spent twenty-four years dancing with The Australian Ballet, twenty of them as a principal artist. He has received three Helpmann Awards, two Mo Awards and an Australian Dance Award for "Outstanding Performance by an Individual". On Australia Day (26 January) 1991 Heathcote was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia, General Division, for "service to ballet".

Biography

Heathcote was born in Wagin, Western Australia on 16 October 1964, the second of four children. He was educated at Wesley College in South Perth. He was schooled in ballet by Shelley Rae and Kira Bousloff. In 1980 he obtained a scholarship with West Australian Ballet Company and the following year he was accepted into Australian Ballet School in Melbourne. Heathcote joined The Australian Ballet in 1983 and in 1987 was appointed as their principal artist.

Heathcote danced for a season with the American Ballet Theatre in 1992, and has also guested with the Royal Danish Ballet and the Birmingham Royal Ballet.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Steven Heathcote” is australian ballet dancer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Steven, Heathcote and Australian, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1964, 1991, 1980, 1983—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1964-10-16. For this dossier, Steven, Heathcote and Australian is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “australian ballet dancer” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 20, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q20090880. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964, 1991, 1980 and 1983.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Steven Heathcote”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Steven Heathcote primary sources, Steven Heathcote archive and Steven research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Steven Heathcote”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Steven Heathcote” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.