An obituary from Jennifer Shennan
Matz Skoog was instrumental in strengthening and developing the art and profession of dance in New Zealand during his term as Artistic Director of Royal New Zealand Ballet (1996–2001). His wife, New Zealander Amanda Skoog, was General Manager (2006–2015) and Matz was at times ballet master or rehearsal director during that term as well. There is a fine tribute to him on RNZB website.
A major interview in 2022 in the Dance Legends series hosted by English dance critic Ismene Brown (on Youtube) covers Matz’ childhood vocational training at the Royal Swedish Ballet school, his studies at the Kirov Ballet in St.Petersburg, his performing career with RSB then with English National Ballet (ENB), with Nederlands Dans Theater, Rambert Dance Company, and in several projects with Rudolf Nureyev and with Mary Skeaping. Following his term with RNZB, he was Artistic Director back at ENB from 2001–2005.
In New Zealand Matz took on management challenges with a sense of adventure while masking the hard work entailed. He always acknowledged a team effort, giving generous credit to John Page and then Sue Paterson as General Managers, and Kit Toogood as Chair of the Board. The shift to a permanent home in purpose-renovated premises of the St.James Theatre marked a milestone, and the move to direct Government funding, away from the previous Arts Council application-based funding, enabled a new era in the company’s long-term planning.
It is clear that his European training and experiences had given Matz a secure understanding of how dance heritage could contribute in contemporary times, without holding on to old history for its own sake and in this he was a both/and not an either/or man. He had no time for the ‘Control & Command’ management of some world ballet companies or schools, adopting instead an ‘Engage and Encourage’ approach in his own style of directing. He dropped the Company’s rankings of Principal, Soloist, etc., preferring to encourage the dancers to develop their individual qualities and strengths. He always wanted virtuosity to serve expression, not vice versa, and lamented that extremes of technique often replaced the poetry of alignment and épaulement.
Matz found a deep rapport in Russell Kerr whose choreographic vision and output he greatly respected. He explains in the Legends interview why he and Russell found the old divide between ‘Classical’ and ‘Contemporary’ no longer necessary or helpful for dancers today, insisting that ‘Excellence’ was the only goal. This was borne out in the broadened repertoire of new works Matz commissioned from New Zealand choreographers—not only Russell Kerr but also Douglas Wright, Michael Parmenter, Shona McCullagh, and from Eric Languet. Many Company dancers were encouraged to make work for emerging choreographic seasons.
The indelibly powerful Soldatenmis, by Jiri Kylian, to Martinu’s Mass for an Unknown Soldier, proved one of the strongest works the company ever performed. The cast requires all the company’s male dancers in full muster, a kind of resonance with the haka taparahi of Maori tradition. [When one of the male dancers was injured, Matz cast the petite and wonderful Pieter Symonds as replacement, which brought echoes of Elizabeth 1, or Joan of Arc, to the stage. In a later return season, again an injured male dancer was replaced, this time by Laura Saxon-Jones, who proved memorable in the role.]
Matz himself was an inspiring teacher but also invited his long-standing friend and colleague Charles Mudry for teaching residencies at RNZB. (They both understood why a dance critic might want to study the forging of dancers in daily class in the studio rather than rely solely on fleeting performances in the theatre so, lucky me, I was invited to watch those masterclasses every day for a month. Mudry might be the best ballet master in Europe, certainly the most musical, so, even luckier me, I later watched him teach at Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen—different dancers, same gem of a class, meticulous attention to every gesture and every note of music, immaculately prepared, luminously communicated. We watched RDB perform Neumeier’s heart-rending ballet The Little Mermaid, but when I asked Charles which choreographer in any time or place had moved him most, his reply was instant—‘Pina Bausch of course’.) Charles and Matz were as brothers.
Other highlights of Matz’ term, all illustrated on RNZB’s website, included the national Tutus on Tour programmes which re-traced the countrywide itineraries of the Company’s early years under founding director Poul Gnatt in 1950s. The powerful Dracula gave stellar roles to leading dancers Ou Lu and Pieter Symonds, and audiences cried for more. The spirited season of Ihi FreNZy combined the Maori cultural group, Te Mātārae i Orehu, as Act One, with Mark Baldwin’s choreography to a set of songs by Split Enz, as Act Two. The project had involved a stay on the marae in Rotorua for the whole company which was an impressive step in the development of bi-cultural awareness and respect in a dance context. In the resulting performance, at the end of a forceful first act, Te Mātārae’s leader moved forward with careful steps of takahia to place a kiwi feather downstage centre just as the curtain fell. It was a small gesture but a poignant one, birds of a feather (it was probably swept up in the curtain hem, it might be still there for all we know) but in the combined haka of all Te Mātārae and RNZB at the final curtain call, you couldn’t tell by the end of the tour which dancer was from which troupe. (I see Shannon Dawson and Geordan Wilcox among them yet).
Matz continued to stay in touch with many dancers and colleagues years after he had worked with them, and remained ready to offer help and advice in his later years as coach and mentor.
The Legends interview includes an excerpt from Swansong by Christopher Bruce in which Matz had created the role of The Interrogator, in a chilling portrayal of the psychological torture to which many individuals are subjected in a range of political and social situations. He is mesmerising in the role. (I watched it on the day that the cause of Navalny’s death was revealed to the world—and the day that Obama spoke to oppose ICE and in support of protestors in Minneapolis. The theme of a choreography like Swansong is, unfortunately, always contemporary).
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I penned five different paragraphs to begin this obituary but deleted them all, since a cv full of dates and place names can’t begin to do justice to the ready smile and twinkling eye, the wit, friendship and optimism in the man. He was lively, spirited, and so generously ready to help. He respected the work of others and would tell them as much, making the world a better place. He coached Baroque dance in The Long Hall, intrigued that we were working from centuries-old dance notations, and coaxed a 400-year-old sarabande from a bud into a bloom. How can he be dead?
Matz’ last ‘letter to the world’ that he emailed to friends and colleagues only a fortnight before he died was poignant, honest, gracious, grateful, heartbreaking but not heart-broken, and still managed to carry the hallmark humour he was renowned for. In it he accepted the inevitable, but also quoted from Peter Pan, the brilliant ballet he had commissioned for RNZB from Russell Kerr—‘I do believe in fairies, I do believe in fairies.’ We could have replied ‘You don’t need to believe in fairies. They exist’ as Matz is now one of the spirit people hovering to remind us of all that he did, and to remember him for a long time to come.
One can only send heartfelt and deepest sympathies to his wife Amanda, and sons Sam and Louis, in the untimely loss of such a loved husband and father—and to his many worldwide friends and colleagues who respected and appreciated him immeasurably, none more so than in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Haere rā, e hoa mā, haere haere atu. Kua hinga te tõtara i te wao nui a Tāne.
(Farewell, dear friend, go now. A tōtara tree has fallen in the great forest of Tāne).
Jennifer Shennan, 20 February 2026
Featured image: Matz Skoog. Photo: © Sandy Connon. Courtesy of Royal New Zealand Ballet
Sources:
Amanda Skoog, RNZB, Anne Rowse, Keith McEwing, Ismene Brown, Daniel Belton, Lily Bones
Numerous illustrations of works mentioned are in A Time to Dance Jennifer Shennan [Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2003], and Royal New Zealand Ballet at 60 Jennifer Shennan & Anne Rowse (eds) [Victoria University Press, 2013]. A digital version of both titles is also available.