Australian Ballet’s Amber Scott On Discovering Ballet

Prima Ballerina Amber Scott is one of the Australian Ballet’s most beloved dancers and the company’s principal ballerina. To mark World Ballet Day, she talks about how she discovered ‘the love of dance’.

Born and raised in Brisbane, Amber moved to Melbourne at the tender age of 11 to join the prestigious Australian Ballet School, paving the way to begin her illustrious dancing career with the Australian Ballet in 2001.

Amber was just four years old when her love of ballet began and was entranced when her parents took her to her first ballet, Swan Lake. This iconic performance gave Amber a preview of things to come and her family fondly recalls her waving her arms enthusiastically in her seat.

Amber’s rise through the ranks of the Australian Ballet was fast, reflecting the dancer’s beautiful artistry, classic lines and perfect technique. She was promoted to the top rank of principal artist within a decade of joining the company in 2001.

Amber particularly enjoys classical story ballets – career highlights include dancing alongside Adam Bull in Graeme Murphy’s gut wrenching and beautifully staged Swan Lake, which toured Paris, Manchester, Tokyo and Nagoya; performing Tatiana in John Cranko’s Onegin; the titular role of Manon in Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon, the Sugar Plum Fairy in Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker; andJuliet in Graeme Murphy’s Romeo+Juliet.

Critics have also praised her precision and ability to master complex choreography including her ‘star turn’ in the 2014 production of Wayne McGregor’s ultra cool Chroma (Amber cites as a career highlight the chance to work with Wayne on Dyad 1929, a ballet he choreographed on the Australian Ballet in 2009), Stephen Baynes’s Molto Vivace and Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain.

Amber has won numerous awards throughout her career and has been invited to perform with Royal New Zealand Ballet and guest star at the Fall for Dance Festival in New York and Stuttgart Ballet’s 50^th anniversary gala.

This elegant leading lady took some time out from performing to sit down in her dressing room at the Sydney Opera House with Jane Albert, where she chatted about first discovering ballet, her advice for aspiring young ballerinas and her extraordinary career as a dancer. Watch this stunning interview above…

Credits:
All performance vision and photographs courtesy of The Australian Ballet.
Swan Lake – Stephen Baynes
Suite en Blanc – Serge Lifar
After the Rain – Christopher Wheeldon
Molto Vivace – Stephen Baynes

CHROMA (2006)
Choreography: Wayne McGregor
Restager: Antoine Vereeken
Music: Joby Talbot and Jack White III
Costume design: Moritz Junge
Set design: John Pawson
Lighting design: Lucy Carter
Reproduced for The Australian Ballet by Simon Bennison