Scott Ambler, the dancer who played the original Prince Siegfried in Matthew Bourne’s celebrated Swan Lake, has died aged 57. Ambler had an extensive career in theatre and was best known for choreographing the manic traders of Lucy Prebble’s Enron, the embattled politicians in James Graham’s This House and the competing athletes in an audacious staging of Chariots of Fire that ran during the 2012 London Olympics.
Rupert Goold, who directed Enron and a Vegas-themed Merchant of Venice that featured choreography by Ambler, was among those who paid tribute on Twitter. Goold called him “the most positive, passionate, life-giving collaborator ever”.
The actor Jamie Beamish tweeted: “What a gentleman. Scott took a company of about 80% non-dancers in Merchant of Venice and made us feel like we were playing Vegas every night. Stratford didn’t know what hit it.” Kate Fleetwood, who played Medea at the Almeida in London, with choreography by Ambler, described him as “such a kind man, with fire in his belly”.
Ambler trained at the Rambert school of ballet and performed with the now defunct Extemporary Dance Theatre, as well as English National Opera and DV8. He was in the original casts of Bourne’s productions The Car Man, Edward Scissorhands, Highland Fling, Nutcracker! and Cinderella. In 2014, he directed a dance-theatre adaptation of Lord of the Flies for Bourne’s company New Adventures with whom he was an associate artist. Lord of the Flies toured the UK and at each stop auditioned local non-professionals to appear alongside the cast.
For the Royal Shakespeare Company, Ambler was the movement director on Mark Ravenhill’s Candide, Tom Morton-Smith’s Oppenheimer and Angus Jackson’s Julius Caesar. In 2015, he choreographed a large company of actors performing King John by candlelight in Northampton’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre. At Hampstead theatre in London, he oversaw the movement of the miners at work in Beth Steel’s Wonderland and the races in Chariots of Fire, which turned the theatre into a running track, transferred to the West End and earned Ambler an Olivier award nomination for best choreographer.
