“I didn’t start dancing out of burning desire for it. I did it because I was a well-behaved little boy,” Matz Skoog told the journalist Ismene Brown in 2022. When he was an eight-year-old in Stockholm, Skoog’s mother suggested he audition for the Royal Swedish Ballet school and, because he was in the habit of doing what his mother asked, he said yes. By the time Skoog was 12, though, “there was never any doubt that I was going to become a dancer”.
His mother clearly had good instincts, as Skoog, who has died of cancer aged 68, went on to become a star principal dancer with London Festival Ballet (now English National Ballet) in the 1980s. That was only one part of a rich career that included dancing, teaching and directing companies around the world, and then channelling his experience into working as a professional development coach for artists and executives.
