William Chappell (dancer)

William Chappell
Chappell in the 1940s
Born
William Evelyn Chappell

(1907-09-27)27 September 1907
Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England
Died1 January 1994(1994-01-01) (aged 86)
Rye, East Sussex, England
Other namesBilly Chappell
OccupationsDancer, ballet designer and director
Years activeLate 1920s – mid-1980s

William Chappell (27 September 1907 – 1 January 1994) was a British dancer, ballet designer and director. He is noted for being a pioneering dancer within the companies that formed the basis of the modern British ballet, and was also a celebrated theatrical designer for more than 40 ballets or revues, including many of the early works of Sir Frederick Ashton and Dame Ninette de Valois. He also developed a distinctive writing style displayed in voluminous correspondence and in books on ballet, theatre design and on the life of his long-time friend Edward Burra.

The Oxford Dictionary of Dance described him as 'an enormously versatile talent'.[1]

In a memorial tribute at the end of his life, the dance writer Peter Brinston summed up Chappell's dancing career[2] with the words:

"He was a creative spirit which helped to found the national ballet we have today."

Early life

Chappell was born in Wolverhampton, the son of theatrical manager Archibald Chappell and his wife Edith Eva Clara Black (née Edith Blair-Staples). Edith, the daughter of an army officer, was raised in Ceylon and India; in pursuing a career in repertory acting, she moved away from her upper-middle-class roots and married twice to fellow actors, by the first of whom she had a daughter, Hermina, the second time being to Archibald Chappell, by whom she had two daughters, Dorothea and Honor, followed by Billy. Chappell was acutely aware of his apparently 'déclassé’ origins; whereas his mother's brother had maintained a conventional upper-middle-class life, being a tea-planter in Ceylon and able to provide his son, Patrick (who was close to Billy and spent time with his aunt's family in school vacations) with a private school and Oxford University education, Chappell studied at Balham Grammar School.[3]

After his father deserted the family when he was still a baby, Chappell and his mother moved to 35 Dornton Road, Balham, London[4], where she pursued a career as a fashion journalist.[5] Edith's daughter by her first marriage, romantic novelist Hermina Black, Chappell's half-sister, was living nearby in Wandsworth.[6] Chappell studied at the Chelsea School of Art (Chelsea Poly) where aged fourteen he met fellow students Edward Burra, Barbara Ker-Seymer and Clover Pritchard (later de Pertinez) forging life-long friendships.[5]

Clover de Pertinez recalls of their early meeting:[7]

'Chelsea Poly was under the influence of Augustus John. Raggle-taggle gypsies were all the go. Not for me, though, or for Burra, Barbara Ker-Seymer and William Chappell. We aspired to the smooth chic and sophistication to be seen on the covers of Vogue by Erte and George Lepape, to be found in the novels of Ronald Firbank, Scott Fitzgerald, Paul Moraud, Jean Giradoux, and above all in Diaghilev's Russian Ballets.'

Chappell did not take up dancing seriously until he was seventeen when he studied under Marie Rambert,[2] whom he met through his friend Frederick Ashton.[5]

This awareness of his background leads to a distinctive self-deprecating tone detectable throughout his writings. For example, in his book Studies in Ballet[8] he finds he needs to justify his writing by listing 'any pertinent reasons I might have for raising my voice or flourishing my pen':

  1. I had been a dancer myself.
  2. I had worked with English and Russian companies.
  3. I had suffered in ballet class under Rambert, de Valois, Nijinska and Sergueef.
  4. I had created roles in ballet and performed in most of the classics.
  5. I had worked in the same corps de ballet with Lichine, Shabelevsky, Jasinsky, Verchinina, and Ashton.
  6. I had partnered Karsavina, Lopokova, Markova, Fonteyn, Argyle, May and Brae.
  7. I had a wide and practical knowledge of ballet design and costume.
  8. I knew dancers as people as well as performers.

Even this list is not complete. In his contribution to Peter Brinson's collection of talks The Ballet in Britain,[9] under the heading Problems of Ballet Design, he lists the various people with whom he worked, took class, rehearsed and performed, which reads like a "who's who" of the 1930s ballet world. For example, he said that he was taught his role in L'Apres-midi d'un Faune by Woizikovsky.

Career

Dance

Chappell recalls in his discussion "Problems of Ballet Design" in the collection The Ballet in Britain,[10] 'I was one of those monstrous children given to prancing around whenever anyone played the piano. I had a sort of urge for dancing'. He continues:

'Then I lost interest in the dance and decided I wanted to be an artist. I went to art school and was full of splendid ideas about becoming a painter - ideas, I am afraid, not founded on anything very much. While I was at art school a friend took me to see Marie Rambert. She was strict and firm, and made me do an arabesque. It was a very bad one; she banged me on the back and said,'Hold up your head!' Still, there were so few male dancers in those days she was delighted to have anybody, even me, so I started having classes ... after a while I decided I was not going to be a very good painter so I took my dancing more seriously and started going to her classes properly.'

Chappell notes that the only other male pupil Rambert had at the time was Frederick Ashton. Ashton and Chappell were life-long friends. Their early careers were closely connected and Chappell played an important role in providing friendship and support at critical moments in Ashton's career. In 1928 Ashton had moved to Paris to work with the Ida Rubinstein Company. Ashton was lonely, living in Montmartre in a flat belonging to the composer Lennox Berkeley. Chappell was passing through Paris at the time with Burra and they called on Ashton. Ashton was insistent that Chappell, now training with Rambert, should join the Rubenstein company under Nijinska's formidable leadership. He recalled:

'He nagged and nagged at me until finally I agreed. I thought she'd never take me because I was hopeless - I was so untaught at that period and really wasn't any good. But I went along and made a terrible exhibition of myself and the next thing I knew I was in. It didn't really matter that I was no good as she was determined to have me for Fred's sake. She liked him so much that she was prepared to overlook my faults just to please him.'[11]

Thus was formed a link between Ashton and Chappell and Nijinska (and hence her brother Vaslav Nijinsky) who brought with her a complete - revolutionary - philosophy of dance, ballet and movement. Ashton recalled for Julia Kavanagh[11] the excitement and demands of the Nijinska class:

'Her classes were fascinating. They were never the same. She'd decide to do everything in waltz rhythm one day or everything in Spanish rhythm or syncopated rhythm. She brought the music to class, all worked out. But the pianist didn't sit going tum, tum, tum, she came with tomes and would one day do a whole class of Chopin with the most wonderful adages, another say a whole class of Bach, another day there'd be a whole class of nothing but tangos.'

For two years Chappell and Ashton toured Europe with Rubenstein's company under the direction of Massine and Nijinska. Chappell returned to London in 1929 to dance with Rambert's Ballet Club (later Ballet Rambert), the Camargo Society and Ninette de Valois's Vic-Wells Ballet becoming one of the founding dancers of British ballet. Throughout the 1930s he created more than forty roles for Rambert and Vic-Wells, including:

He was the first dancer to partner Margot Fonteyn, who, in her autobiography [12] recalls:

'At fifteeen-and-a-half my romantic heart was as soft as butter. It was not long before I developed a crush on William Chappell, who was so much the kindest of the awe-inspiring adults around me and who had such blue eyes. He was gentle, he never shouted, and would reprove Helpmann for some of his biting obervations with the words, 'Don't mock people, Bobby - it's wicked'... Happily for me, the crush coincided with the rehearsals of my first principle part, in a ballet called Rio Grande - or a Day in a Southern Port. Billy Chappell was a sailor and I was the girl he picked up. Thus I was provided most opportunely with an excuse to regard him affectionately while acting my role.'

Rio Grande was the first production to showcase Burra's designs on stage - choreographed by Ashton and performed by the Carmargo Society premiered on November 29, 1931.[13]

Two of these works in particular, in which Billy Chappell danced notable roles,  are ballets which had profound effects on the future development of modern dance - Spectre de la Rose and L’Apres-midi d’faun.

Faun

Faun was Nijinski’s first ballet which he choreographed, developing it with his sister Nijinska in 1910/11. The ballet historian Lynn Garafola[14] notes:

‘In front of the pier glass in the Nijinski family living room, where brother molded sister into the poses of Faun and Nymph, the ballet took shape.’

Faun has been written about  at length. To draw on one aspect, to illustrate the pioneering nature of the work,  Garafola argues how this work, among other things, did something new with the presentation of sex on stage. In the final few bars of the ballet the faun performs a movement of the hips suggesting masturbation over a scarf discarded by a faun. Garafola notes that, at the time, on the stage, the presentation of sex was highly conventionalised[14]. However:

‘When transferred to the dance stage it amounted to a declaration of war against the received conventions of ballet. Indeed, into the eight minutes of Faune Nijinsky packed the essentials of ballet modernism, completing the revolution initiated by Fokine.'[15]

In discussing the importance of this particular work, the scholar Peter Stoneley in his book ‘A Queer History of the Ballet’[16] observes that in a few short years Diaghilev's Ballet Russe had transformed the ballet 'from a spectacle that focuses on the female body to one that focussed on the man’:

‘Furthermore, the main figure, or the body in question, was not a limp form, but a muscular man with astonishing explosive energy [...] Even though he drew on fin de siècle resources, this was an escape from Wildean shame, and from physiological destiny, into a joyous process of free association.'

Faun was first performed by Nijinski with the Ballet Russes on May 29 1912 at the Theatre du Chatelet Paris. It was first performed by a British company by the then named ‘Marie Rambert Dancers’ with Billy Chappell in the title role in April 1931 as recorded in The Times Ballet Club notice which said of at the Rambert Dancers’ first full programme at its new London home, the Mercury Theatre in Ladbroke Grove that [17]:

‘The Marie Rambert Dancers … have profited by their experience in past seasons at Hammersmith and elsewhere and are settling into a theatre of their own with obvious profit. The dancing is smoother and more precise in ensemble…’

Of Faun, the reviewer noted (modestly, it has to be said) that :

‘Mr. Chappell's pièce de résistance, however, was L'Après-Midi d'un Faune, the chief addition to the repertory, which had been produced for the club by M. Leon Woizikovsky. The power of this ballet is largely derived from the contrast of the faun's rectilinear movements with the fluidity of the music, and Mr. Chappell had fully realized it.’

Forty-eight years later, in 1979, Billy Chappell, along with his Rambert co-dancer Elizabeth Schooling, revisited Faun again, this time to teach it to Rudolf Nuyerev, as part of that season’s Nuyerev season. The historical significance of that performance, and its accomplishment in having its choreography accurately recalled drew public acclamation. The Times’ ballet critic, John Percival wrote appreciatively[18]:

'Although he could coast along on proven successes, Rudolf Nureyev's inner drive keeps him tackling new commitments. A particularly valuable achievement this year has been restoring Nijinsky's only surviving ballet, L'Apre-midi d'un faune, to public view in a worthy form. Preservation of the choreography is one of our many debts to Marie Rambert. William Chappell and Elisabeth Schooling, who learnt it under her guidance, were the advisers for Nureyev's productions with the Joffrey Ballet at the Mark Hellinger [theatre] in New York and Festival Ballet at the London Coliseum'

Percival's review continued by saying Nureyev's own performance, 'fired by intelligence as well as passion, revealed the depth of Nijinsky's imagination' and then observed:

'ln London, he was matched by Margot Fonteyn's hieratic account of the chief nymph; she danced that and an incredibly young-seeming girl in Spectre de la rose just four weeks after the Royal Ballet had celebrated her sixtieth birthday with a gala at Covent Garden'.

Fortunately we have film of both Chappell's 1931 performance[19] and that of the Joffrey Ballet and Nureyev[20].

For Chappell the year 1979 was a remarkable moment of historic synchronicity - he being the first to partner Fonteyn, Nureyev being the last (see list of performances by Margot Fonteyn) and also because it featured the celebrated Fokine ballet Spectre de la rose.

Spectre

Spectre de la rose, in the opinion of Cyril Beaumont[21], was a ballet created by Michel Fokine to exploit the talents of Vaslav Nijinski. First performed by Nijinski with Tamara Karsavina on April 19 1911 at the Théàtre de Monte-Carlo as part of the Ballet Russe programme it was performed by Billy Chappell with Pearl Argyll  (and on other occasions, Prudence Hyman) on July 17 1932 as a Ballet Club presentation at the Mercury Theatre London.[22]

Again this work has been widely discussed and many different versions of it are available to view. Beaumont[23] describes it as a classical pas de deux, an adaptation of Gautier’s little poem, the subject of which is the evocation of the spirit of the rose given to a young girl at a ball and that 'Fokine’s intention was to use Nijinski to create a poetical picture of the rose coloured sprite'. He recalls it 'achieved a furore whenever it was given', it was a:

‘... genuine choreographic poem, so beautiful and intangible, that, when it was at an end, you were uncertain as to whether you had seen a ballet or had been momentarily dreaming.’

It broke many conventions - not just the male wearing a rose petal costume, but also in the choreography. Fokine[24] wrote of the rose:

'He is the spirit, he is the hope. He is the fragrance of the rose, the caresses of the gentle petals, and much more that defies description. He is in no circumstances a “cavalier”, a ballerina’s partner. The arm positions of the ballet are the opposite of the “correct” arm positions of the old ballet. The arms live, speaking and do not “execute positions”.'

Design

His flair as a designer was encouraged by Rambert and for this he is also remembered. In parallel with his dance career he designed more than 40 ballets or revues, including many of the early works of Ashton and de Valois including:

also

His designs for Les Patineurs remained in the repertory and his conception for Les Rendezvous, although frequently revised, continues. He brought his vast experience of ballet design to opera, musical theatre, revues and drama, as both director and designer.[2]

Chappell's work has appeared in costume design exhibitions for example in the 2013 show British Ballet Design of the 1930s held at Saffron Walden [3]

Direction

Chappell has been credited as directing the following productions:

Libretto and production

Cinema

Chappell played the part of the court painter Titorelli in Orson Welles' The Trial (1962 film), based on the Kafka novel of the same name (along with many of the other actors in the film, his voice was dubbed by Welles himself).

Military service

At the outbreak of war in 1939, he was the first male dancer to join, spending the duration of the war, firstly in the artillery and later as a second lieutenant entertaining the troops.[2] His first eighteen months of service, and his feelings about being in the Army, are recounted in the essay 'The Sky Makes Me Hate It' commissioned by John Lehmann and published by him in Penguin New Writing Number 13 of 1942.

In his book Studies in Ballet, he describes an occasion in North Africa when his company had no transport and had to march to their destination about eighteen miles away. He used this story to illustrate the benefit of ballet training to legs and feet, allowing a middle-aged man to arrive fresher than men nearly half his age, who had only received the routine Army physical training. He also emphasised the importance of a long unbroken tradition and continuity in the training of male dancers. He was of the opinion that the war was a factor that had caused chaos in the Sadler's Wells Company and rendered valueless years of work. He contrasted the treatment of the ballet in England and in Russia, where male dancers were considered important enough in their work to be kept in it.

Personal life

Chappell's personal life was bound up with that of close friends. For example, Barbara Ker-Seymer's biographer[32] writes that Barbara, 'having turned her back upon her family', surrounded herself with a close-knit group of friends:

'These became a life-long surrogate family, far more beloved and important than any blood relatives. At its core were three gay men: the artist Edward Burra, the ballet dancer William Chappell and the choreographer Frederick Ashton'.

He was invited by writer and lecturer on dance Peter Brinson to take part in a series of eight lectures on 'The Ballet in Britain' at Oxford University where he entertained an academic audience with his thoughts on problems of ballet design. Other speakers included Dame Ninette de Valois director of the Royal Ballet, Marie Rambert, Arnold Haskell, William Cole and Douglas Kennedy[33]

Rye, East Sussex

Since his teenage years, Chappell was a frequent visitor to Rye, East Sussex, at first to Ed Burra's family home at Springfield and in later life renting homes either in Romney Marsh or in Rye. In 1970 or thereabouts Burra bought Chappell a house in Rye at 23 Rope Walk. On Burra's death, in circumstances not entirely clear, it appears that unknown to Billy, his friend Ed had left the house to him. Chappell lived there for the next 23 years, until his death in 1994.[34][2]

Filmography

† This was the second broadcast of ballet on British television following the official start of the BBC high definition television service on 2 November 1936.

Bibliography

  • Development of the Ballet, William Chappell, in New Writing and Daylight (Summer 1943) Edited by John Lehmann. Hogarth Press. London (1943)
  • The Sky Makes Me Hate It, William Chappell, in Penguin New Writing Number 13 (April - June 1942) Edited by John Lehmann. Penguin Books.
  • Words from a Stranger, William Chappell, in Penguin New Writing Number 19 (October - December 1944) Edited by John Lehmann. Penguin Books.
  • Studies in Ballet, William Chappell, John Lehmann Ltd, London (1948) ISBN 978-1340914226
  • Fonteyn: Impressions of a Ballerina, William Chappell, Rockcliff Publishing Corporation Ltd, London (1951)
  • Problems of Ballet Design, William Chappell in The Ballet in Britain, Edited by Peter Brinson, Oxford University Press (1962)
  • Edward Burra: A painter remembered by his friends, William Chappell, HarperCollins Distribution Services (1982) ISBN 978-0233974507
  • Well Dearie!: The Letters of Edward Burra, William Chappell, Gordon Fraser Gallery Ltd, London (1985) ISBN 978-0860920762
  • Thoroughly Modern: The Pioneering Life of Barbara Ker-Seymer, Photographer, and her Brilliant, Bohemian Friends, Sarah Knights, Virago (2023) ISBN 978-0-349-01151-6
  • Beaumont, Cyril (1938). The Complete Book of Ballets. London: Puttnam.
  • Fokine, Michel (1961). Chujoy, Anatole (ed.). Fokine - Memoirs of a Ballet Master. Boston: Little Brown and Company.

References

  1. ^ Craine, Debra; Mackrell, Judith (2010). The Oxford dictionary of dance. Oxford reference online premium (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0-19-172765-8.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Brinson, Peter (4 January 1994). "Obituary: William Chappell". London: www.independent.co.uk. Retrieved 12 April 2013.
  3. ^ a b Arrowsmith, Paul (26 May 2013). "Exhibition of 1930's British Ballet Design – Saffron Walden". DanceTabs. Retrieved 27 January 2026.
  4. ^ Chappell (ed) 1985, p. 52.
  5. ^ a b c "William Chappell (1907-1994), Artist biography". www.tate.org.uk. Retrieved 14 April 2013.
  6. ^ "Edith Blair-Staples". bearalley.blogspot.co.uk. Retrieved 14 April 2013.
  7. ^ Chappell, William (1982). Edward Burra - A Painter Remembered by His Friends. London: Andre Deutsch in association with the Lefevre Gallery. p. 73.
  8. ^ Chappell, William (1948). Studies in Ballet. London: John Lehmann. p. 14.
  9. ^ Brinson, ed. (1962). The Ballet in Britain. London: Oxford University Press. p. 87.
  10. ^ Brinson, Peter (1962). The Ballet in Britain. London: Oxford University Press. p. 86.
  11. ^ a b Kavanagh, Julie (1996). Secret Muses - the life of Frederick Ashton. London: Faber and Faber. p. 95. ISBN 0-571-19062-6.
  12. ^ Fonteyn, Margot (1976). Autobiography. New York: Knopf. p. 44. ISBN 039448570X.
  13. ^ Kennedy, Thomas; Spindel, Eliza; Stephenson, Andrew Michael; Shirley, Rosemary; Tackley, Catherine; Kennedy, Thomas (2025). Edward Burra: exhibition, Tate Britain, London, 13 June-19 October 2025. London: Tate Publishing. pp. 151–156. ISBN 978-1-917055-00-0.
  14. ^ a b Garafola, Lynn (1998). Diaghilev's ballets russes. New York [N.Y.]: Da Capo press. p. 57. ISBN 978-0-306-80878-4.
  15. ^ Further discussion by Garafola and others can be seen at 12.49: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OYJdEQYMMo
  16. ^ Stoneley, Peter (2007). A queer history of the ballet. London ; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. p. 77. ISBN 978-0-415-97279-6.
  17. ^ Times review: "The Ballet Club." Times, 22 Apr. 1931, p. 12. The Times Digital Archive, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS202712214/TTDA?u=esusslib&sid=bookmark-TTDA&pg=12&xid=6e034a4d. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.
  18. ^ Percival, John. "Dance." Times, 5 Dec. 1979, p. I. The Times Digital Archive, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS486901125/TTDA?u=esusslib&sid=bookmark-TTDA&pg=29&xid=1160ca22. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.
  19. ^ "L'Apre-midi d'un faune as performed by William Chappell". Huntley Film Archive. Retrieved 16 March 2026.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  20. ^ "L'Aprés-midi d'un faune - as performed by Rudolf Nureyev with the Joffrey Ballet". Nureyev Is Mesmerizing As The Faun. Retrieved 16 March 2026.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  21. ^ Beamont 1938, p. 715 716.
  22. ^ "Mercury Theatre, London, 1931–1932 - P04 - Rambert Archive". rambertarchive.org.uk. Retrieved 19 March 2026.
  23. ^ Beaumont 1938.
  24. ^ Fokine 1961, p. 206.
  25. ^ "An Intimate Revue at the Gate Studio Theatre". elvirabarney.wordpress.com. Retrieved 21 April 2013.
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  27. ^ Edwards, Anne (1978). Vivien Leigh, A Biography (Biography). Coronet Books. ISBN 978-0-340-23024-4. Retrieved 25 July 2010.
  28. ^ "'Where's Charley?' Production, Synopsis, and Musical Numbers". Guidetomusicaltheatre.com, accessed 22 February 2011
  29. ^ Wansell, Geoffrey (1995). Terence Rattigan - A Biography. London: Fourth Estate. pp. 309, 424.
  30. ^ "Production Archive: Chichester Festival Theatre". cft.org.uk. Chichester Festival Theatre. Archived from the original on 27 April 2012. Retrieved 10 June 2012.
  31. ^ "Opening Night! Opera & Oratorio Premieres - The Violins of Saint-Jacques". Stanford University Libraries. Retrieved 24 November 2013.
  32. ^ Knights (2023). p. 4
  33. ^ de Valois, Ninette; Chappell, William; Rambert, Marie; Haskell, Arnold; Cole, William; Kennedy, Douglas (1962). Brinson, MA, Peter (ed.). The Ballet in Britain - Eight Oxford Lectures. London, New York: Oxford University Press. Retrieved 22 April 2013.
  34. ^ Stevenson, Jane (2007). Edward Burra: Twentieth-Century Eye. Jonathan Cape. pp. 407–408
  35. ^ a b c d e f g "William Chappell (I) (1908–1994)". IMDb. Retrieved 11 April 2013.
  36. ^ Schumann, Howard. "Trial and Error". www.cinescene.com. Retrieved 12 April 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  37. ^ "The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), Technical Crew". Cursum Perficio. Retrieved 12 April 2013.
  38. ^ Reid, John Howard (30 April 2006). Hollywood Movie Musicals. Lulu.com. p. 119. ISBN 1-41169-762-6.
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  41. ^ "List of Original Documents held in the Archive as of 1st February 2000". Alexandra Palace Television Society. Retrieved 12 April 2013.
  42. ^ a b Penman, Robert (1993). Jordan, Stephanie; Allen, Dave (eds.). Parallel Lines: Media Representations of Dance (Arts Council Series), Chapter 5 Ballet and Contemporary Dance on British Television. London: John Libbey & Company Ltd. p. 105. ISBN 0-86196-371-7.
  43. ^ a b Davis, Janet Rowson (1983). Dance Chronicle. Vol 5, No. 3, Ballet on British television, 1933-1939. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. pp. 245–304.
  • England Census, Worcestershire, Balsall Heath. The National Archives, 1911.
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