Liam Mower (english)

The stage musical Billy Elliot opened at the Victoria Palace Theatre in London on 11 May 2005. I was present in the theatre that night to review the show and was sitting in the front stalls with an excellent view of the stage and the celebrity-packed audience but I little realised that I was about to see one of the most remarkable events of my theatre-going life. At the end of his uplifting song and dance number Electricity, the 13 year old Liam Mower performed an immaculate and effortless series of multiple grand pirouettes a la seconde and finished triumphantly in a perfect fourth position.

The hairs were already standing up on the back of my neck when a huge, almost primal, roar erupted from the audience. Everyone stood to applaud excitedly for five minutes in one of the greatest ovations I have ever witnessed in a theatre. At the still eye of the torrential storm stood a slight, apparently calm boy, unfazed by the frenzied response to his dancing. The excitement was appropriate; the moment was exhilarating; but watching that boy I had a moment of regret, and thought: No future moment on stage, in any show, could ever equal what this young man is experiencing now. This is the ...