William Chappell (dancer)

Dance

Chappell recalls in his discussion "Problems of Ballet Design" in the collection The Ballet in Britain,^[9] '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.'^[10]

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^[10] 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:

• The Rake's friend in de Valois's The Rake's Progress
• The popular song in Ashton's Facade
• The title role in Ashton's The Lord of Burleigh
• The recreation of two Nijinsky roles, Le Spectre de la rose and the faun in L'Apres-midi d'un faune^[2]

He was the first dancer to partner Margot Fonteyn, who, in her autobiography ^[11] 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.^[12]

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^[13] 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^[13]. 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.'^[14]

In discussing the importance of this particular work, the scholar Peter Stoneley in his book ‘A Queer History of the Ballet’^[15] 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 ^[16]:

‘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^[17]:

'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'.

For Chappell this 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).

Fortunately we have film of both Chappell's 1931 performance^[18] and that of the Joffrey Ballet and Nureyev^[19].

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:

• Antony Tudor's Lysistrata

• 

  Oxbridge partnership Norman Marshall & Geoffrey Wright's revue Members Only (With Charles Hawtrey and Hermione Gingold at the Gate Theatre Studio, 16A Villiers Street - 1937)^[20]
• Ninette de Valois' The Wise and Foolish Virgins, Bar aux Folies-Bergère and Fête polonaise (music by Glinka - 1941)
• Ashton's Les Rendezvous (music by Auber - 1936), Les Patineurs (music by Giacomo Meyerbeer, arranged by Constant Lambert - 1937) and The Judgement of Paris (music by Lennox Berkeley - 1938)
• Giselle and Coppélia for the Sadler's Wells Company
• Costume design for Ashton's Capriol Suite, (music, Peter Warlock's arr. sixteenth century peasant dances) and La Péri (music by Paul Dukas - 1931)

also

• The Blue bird (The Enchanted Princess), (music by Pyotr Tchaikovsky for the Vic-Wells Ballet - 1936)
• Frank Staff's The Seasons (music by Glasunov for Tudor's London Ballet - 1940) and the dance suite Tartans (music by William Boyce - 1940)
• Mona Inglesby's Amoras (music by Elgar for the International Ballet - 1941) and costume design for Everyman (music by Richard Strauss, arranged from the original scores by Ernest Irving - 1942)

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:

• The Lyric Revue (Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith and the Globe Theatre, London with Dora Bryan, Graham Payn and Ian Carmichael - 1951–1954)^[21]
• High Spirits (revue) (London Hippodrome with Cyril Ritchard and Diana Churchill - 1953)^[21]
• Sheridan's The Rivals (Saville Theatre, London with Laurence Harvey - 1956)^[21]
• Noël Coward's South Sea Bubble (Lyric Theatre with Vivien Leigh - 1956)^[22]
• Arthur Macrae and Richard Addinsell's revue, Living for Pleasure (Garrick Theatre with Dora Bryan, Daniel Massey, George Rose and Lynda Baron - 1958)^[21]
• Wolf Mankowitz's Expresso Bongo (Saville Theatre with Paul Scofield - 1958)^[21]
• Frank Loesser's Where's Charley? (Palace Theatre, London - 1958/59)^[23]
• Terence Rattigan's Joie de Vivre (Queen's Theatre, London, music by Robert Stoltz, lyrics by Paul Dehn with Donald Sinden, Joan Heal, Joana Rigby and Robin Hunter - 1960)^[24]
• On The Avenue (revue) (Globe Theatre Beryl Reid and George Rose - 1961)^[21]
• Passion Flower Hotel (Ambassador) 1965
• George Farquhar's The Beaux' Stratagem (Chichester Festival Theatre - 1967).^[25]
• The West End revival of Enid Bagnold's The Chalk Garden (Theatre Royal Haymarket, London with Gladys Cooper and Joan Greenwood - 1971)^[21]

Libretto and production

• The Violins of Saint-Jacques (1966)^[26]

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).

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.^[29][2]