Making the leap

DAVID McAllister’s whole life has been the Australian Ballet (AB) – he trained at the school, danced with the company for 18 years, and became its longest-serving artist director. Now, after having held one of the country’s most glamorous jobs for 20 years, he has decided to step down. Soar is his farewell autobiography.

So it is quite a surprise when his Introduction doesn’t begin with ballet but instead with his first sexual experience. In this way he immediately establishes that Soar is not just about his career but also about his long coming-to-terms with his sexuality.

At age 19 McAllister met and began a relationship with his idol, 37-year-old Kelvin Coe, the AB’s principal dancer. (Coe was a celebrated dancer who was much later exposed against his will by a journalist as one of the first public figures in Australia of having AIDS,