Matz Skoog dancing Maurice Bejart's 'Bolero'

Matz Skoog is a Performance and Executive Coach, Consultant and Artistic Adviser; accredited as a coach by the UK Institute of Leadership and Management and by the City and Guilds of London. 

Born in Stockholm he originally trained as a dancer in Sweden and Russia. Matz had  a successful career at the highest level in both classical ballet and contemporary dance performing internationally and working with the most exciting artists of his era.  Following a twenty-five-year dancing career he became a much sought-after tutor, leading to a variety of leadership appointments, including Artistic Director of two national ballet companies – English National Ballet and the Royal New Zealand Ballet. 

Through his various roles Matz has gained great wisdom and experience. He now works as a performance coach alongside ambitious professionals helping them realise their capacity for leadership and discover what they need to do to achieve success, and most importantly what is stopping them from maximising their potential. 

Matz’s approach is enquiring, empathetic, and practical. He enables his clients to discover creative solutions for personal and professional development. People he works with typically go from feeling stuck, for any variety of reasons, to finding clarity  of direction and renewed confidence bringing them better results more quickly and effectively. 

Matz shares what he looks for in a dancer.

The main qualities in a dancer that I look for is Individuality and personality. Dancers that can dance is obviously a prerequisite. I look for dancers that know their stuff have a good technique and physique, but mostly, for me I look for personality and individuality. 

When I was a director at English National Ballet (ENB) I would have 2-3 applications for positions in the company per week. There was a lot of interested dancers. The dancers I chose looked the role and could do the work. 

As a director, when watching auditions, I asked myself these valuable questions when choosing dancers that would suit the company environment.

• Is this someone who I can trust? 
• Is this going to me someone that is self-managing? 
• Is this someone who isn’t going to be precious?
• Is this someone who is going to be robust? (They need to be able to cope with the pressures of what the job involves).

In a technical sense, dancers of today will greatly benefit from broad training across various dance forms. Today for a dancer to be successful in a career you need a strong, traditional technique foundation together with a contemporary dance technique. You can expect that a lot of companies will do both styles and you will need to work across those styles. As a difference today, some choreographers might use voice on stage in dance. Anything from speech to singing. Dancers now need to learn how to verbalize. Dancers have traditionally been silent. they have been trained to work quietly and they are now required to speak up and learn that ability technically.

I have rarely seen a successful dancer who is not also intelligent. That Is an important point to make. If you want to go into this career with the idea is that you just want to dance, that you don’t want to think about anything else, I think you are making a mistake. If you go into the profession with the intention of exploring it and being prepared to change and be courageous and ready to do different things, then you will be successful.

Over my years as artistic director I found those dancers that knew what they wanted to do beyond their dancing career also worked better in the present time than those who didn’t have a vision of the future. Having a vision of the future allows you to work much more securely in the present time.

Keep up your education, one day you are going to need it.

Artists navigating the world of today.

For an artist to be successful it is no longer enough to be master of his or her craft; today, everyone involved in the arts needs to be an entrepreneur and to have many skills at their fingertips. In fact, it was never enough only to master a chosen field to do well in it. The vast majority of the greatest and most successful artists throughout history were multi-talented, multi-skilled and entrepreneurial: and, more often than not, if they did not come from a prosperous background were adept at acquiring wealthy sponsors on their march to the top. To be fair, many may have suffered for their art but few actually starved, or they would never have been able to create their legacy and produce the body of work they left behind. 

In previous centuries, working conditions were different for a practising artist. The pace of life was slower, society less complex; fewer choices were available and cultural conditions probably more straightforward. Those involved in the arts had more time to focus on their craft, whatever it may have been, to develop appropriate skills and come to grips with the demands of the market. Yesterday, a master craftsman could demand respect based on his skill alone. In today’s fast-changing, intensely competitive world with its myriad possibilities how we define art and artistic success has changed. Instant communication and infinite possibilities for self-expression have altered everything forever. 

The arts market today demands greater agility and readiness to change than ever before. The digital revolution has brought with it many tough challenges, but also many exciting opportunities to be embraced by the aspiring artist, because there has never been a better time to explore new avenues of creativity. The Internet makes it possible for anyone to showcase his or her art to vast audiences at virtually no production cost. There are new avenues to explore for anyone who wants to practise their art in public, without the need of a producer, agent or publisher. It is now possible to distribute music and choreography via YouTube and have thousands, millions even, of viewers: writers can make their work available on blogs or self-publish a book on Amazon: photographers have Instagram at their disposal. But to navigate a career through this obstacle course of opportunities requires extraordinary determination along with the ability to adapt to shifting circumstances and a willingness to adopt new trends.

 For any creative artist it will always be imperative to change and evolve. The most successful artists do this regularly, not only focusing on their particular field but becoming multi-disciplined masters of many skills as well. That’s the challenge of working in the new ‘gig economy’ where a jack-of-all-trades approach creates opportunities like never before. So how then do we enable artists, whose first duty is to their work and who more often than not toil away on their own, to thrive and to marry their craft with the set of interests and skills essential for success in today’s demanding arts market into a body of good work? 

To be a thriving artist today requires resilience and, as was mentioned earlier, mastering the many skills the modern world demands. To be successful contemporary artists need to manage their careers and carve out a place for themselves within this highly complex and competitive system. They will face many challenges – cultivating patrons and make funding applications; finding collaborators and building partnerships; dealing with marketing and social media; managing relationships with exhibition and performance venues; dealing with copyright issues and, crucially, learning to charge an appropriate fee or price for their work to enable them to make money and to survive another day to create more work.

Artists have always faced these demands and the successful ones have always managed to do so efficiently, so in this respect nothing has actually changed. What’s different today is the magnitude of the task. One could take a cynical view and argue that market forces should dictate who succeeds and who fails. However, if we accept this in a world where instant fame is now a reality some truly talented artists with a less worldly approach to career management could well run the risk of being overshadowed by commercially more savvy, but potentially less worthy, operators.

Matz Skoog

For a free confidential strategy session please contact Matz by email at:  matz.skoog@gmail.com