Heathcote and Part

Late yesterday afternoon I decided I would go and see the Australian Ballet's New Romantics. It was the last show and also the good looking (almost too perfect teeth notwithstanding) Stephen Heathcote's final performance, as, at the grand old age of 43, he is retiring as principal artist with the Australian Ballet. What I know of Stephen, which is only through the media, he's a really nice and down to earth guy. So at 4.30pm I nip into the box office, as the show is entirely sold out, to see if they have any spare or returned tickets. I'm told that they can now sell me (given the lateness of the hour) seats in a box that are normally reserved for wheelchair patrons. They ended up being very good seats, as long as one doesn't suffer from vertigo. There was no-one in a wheelchair in the box, just another woman who bought her ticket at 5.30pm and a man whose babysitter had fallen through at the very last minute, so his wife and 4 year old were sitting in their original seats and he got the not-so-short straw. The woman who was sitting next to me is the mother of a student at the Australian Ballet School and so was giving me a lot of insight into both the school and the company. Anyway, Stephen was given a wonderful ovation at the end of the show.
Another reason I wanted to see this production was that part of it was set to one of my favourite pieces of music, Spiegel Im Spiegel, by Arvo Part. I was first introduced to this piece in a post-coital moment by a lover who preferred listening to music over smoking a cigarette. It translates as Mirror in the Mirror and is a beautifully meditative piece. I normally go very inward when I listen to it, so it was a challenge to watch two people dance to it on stage, but they did so with exquisite grace.
It was a lovely night.