Amber Scott takes final bow after dancing in Swan Lake one last time
After a career spanning two decades, The Australian Ballet’s 60th anniversary production of Swan Lake will be Amber Scott’s last.
When Amber Scott was just four years old she attended her first ballet, a production of Swan Lake in Brisbane performed by London’s Royal Ballet. From the moment the curtain rose she was transfixed. Then a strange thing happened. As the white swans began their graceful entrance, arms elegantly winging up and down, the small child in row F began emulating them, much to the amusement of her fellow audience members.
“I was on the edge of my seat, doing swan arms,” recalls Scott with a laugh. “So mum decided to take me to ballet class. Swan Lake was pivotal in me becoming a ballerina.”
In fact, Swan Lake, the achingly beautiful, tragic story of evil sorcery and unrequited love, would ultimately play a seminal role throughout Scott’s whole career after she was accepted into The Australian Ballet in 2001. Various productions of the perennially popular ballet have taken her from New York to Paris, provided a career breakthrough when she was tapped to dance the lead role in Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake while still a junior dancer in 2004; and debuting that same lead role in the world premiere of Stephen Baynes’s production in 2012.
So it is bittersweet that Swan Lake will play a final, memorable role in the life of this beloved dancer. After a career spanning two decades, Scott, now 40, has decided to retire and The Australian Ballet’s 60th anniversary production of Swan Lake will be her last. She will farewell the stage, her devoted audience and the company that has been her home and family for all her adult life.
There’s never a right time to retire from a career as a professional ballerina, a career that already has a short lifespan given its punishing physical demands; but if she could pick the most appropriate production for her farewell, Swan Lake would be it.
The principal artist had not long returned to the company following the birth of her second daughter, Marion, in early 2022, and was driving to pick up older daughter Bonnie. “I was listening to ABC Classic and Swan Lake came on. I love the music so much and thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if I could be strong enough to dance it again in the upcoming season.’ I’m so lucky I’ve been able to dance this long because you never know what your body’s going to do, what life will happen,” she says. “I’ve danced Swan Lake a lot around the world, so dancing this for the last time really will be full circle.”
If ever there was a child destined for a career in ballet, it’s Scott. “I’ve always loved the music, escaping into stories, even as a little girl I loved dressing up and being a character. It’s been like heaven.” She started ballet classes in Brisbane aged five, and soon began travelling to Melbourne to attend ballet summer schools. When Scott was 11, her family moved to Melbourne and she attended The Australian Ballet School’s junior associate program alongside future onstage partner and dear friend Adam Bull; and later the National Theatre Ballet before being accepted into The Australian Ballet School full-time, and ultimately, the company itself.
She cites myriad career highlights: performing Murphy’s Swan Lake at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and the Lincoln Center in New York with Bull; her first performance of the fiendishly difficult role of Alice in Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and immersing herself in the complex role of Manon in the eponymous production. Beyond the stage there has been helicopter rides to Queensland’s Whitehaven Beach, climbing the Great Wall of China — twice — and doing a photo shoot with Bull in front of the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, captured by Lisa Tomasetti.
“It’s that bittersweet part of ballet: artistically you get more mature but the body has a finite period of time. You can’t do it forever”
One unforgettable moment was being invited to partner David Hallberg, the American international ballet superstar. He had been off stage for two and a half years rehabilitating from a career-threatening ankle injury with the ballet company’s acclaimed medical team and was preparing for his career comeback on the Melbourne stage dancing Coppélia.
Today, Hallberg is the company’s artistic director. Recalling that fateful performance, he says: “Amber was calm and relaxed, something I needed at that stage after [so long] being off it. We’ve always had an easy rapport and friendship, so it was a given that she was the one to guide me through the return. Usually it is the man guiding the woman in classical ballet, but at that stage I felt it was Amber guiding me and easing me back.”
Bull, who retired earlier this year, describes partnering Scott during his 20-year career as “like coming home”. “I don’t think many people get that chance, to find the person where everything just feels right. Amber was so beautifully humble and generous and kind and the moments we shared together [on stage] inspired us to keep pushing and building on the relationship we’d founded,” says Bull. “We’ve lived a whole chunk of our childhood and adulthood together, going through life and babies and relationships, being a support through what can be a tough career.”
Describing The Australian Ballet as Scott’s life and family is true in more ways than one. It was through the company she met fellow principal artist Ty King-Wall, who became her husband in 2018. The couple was a regular and popular onstage couple in productions including Giselle and The Sleeping Beauty. “It’s lovely partnering your husband in romantic ballets, you don’t have to pretend at all,” Scott says. The family juggled the touring demands of work and home life following the births of both daughters, before King-Wall retired last year to become artistic teacher of classical dance at the Australian Ballet School.
In person, Scott is as she appears on stage: gracious, warm and completely dedicated to her art form. “Amber is a real artist as well as a dancer,” says David McAllister, who took over as artistic director the year Scott joined the company and was the one to cast her in the lead role of Odette in 2004 when she was still a junior. “She was amazing, extraordinary, always authentic and that’s something very true to Amber, she loses herself in the role.”
That authenticity extends beyond the stage. “She’s incredibly aware of every other dancer on the stage and in the company, not just herself. She’s the one who remembers people’s birthdays and writes cards when people do a good performance.”
But after dedicating her life to audiences and the stage it’s time to devote her energy to her own family. “Once I had Bonnie, I was enraptured; my girls are the reason I’m leaving, to spend more time with them,” Scott says. “Physically I’ve reached a point where I feel happy, but it’s that bittersweet part of ballet: artistically you get more mature but the body has a finite period of time. You can’t do it forever.”
Beyond the stage, there’s plenty to look forward to. “It’s the small things – being there for school pick-up every day, putting the girls to sleep, being in charge of my own schedule,” she says. “And my body. I’m pretty grateful for how it’s lasted, but if I roll my ankle or have a sore toe, I won’t have to think how it’s going to affect my work.”
Ballet will still feature strongly in her life, as she plans to return to the coaching clinic she and King-Wall set up in Melbourne last year, Tailored Ballet Coaching, after she completed the Graduate Diploma of Elite Dance Instruction while on “safe duties” pregnant with Bonnie.
She knows her final performance — “grand final night, unfortunately” — will be all-consuming but also trusts her body to know what to do. “As a dancer your body has that emergency response, you have to hold it together, and Swan Lake is such a huge ballet I just have to physically get through the show.
“I don’t want to overstay, I want to leave the party on a high. I love ballet and the career I’ve had and want to leave at the best point I can. And when it’s on your terms, that’s a real privilege.”
Swan Lake is currently touring Adelaide, with Brisbane and Sydney to follow. For tickets, go to australianballet.com.au.
This article appears in the October issue of Vogue Australia, on sale now.