Charlotte Chapellier

Charlotte Chapellier (Alençon, France) trained as a dancer at the Conservatoire de Nantes and the Conservatoire Supérieur National de Musique et de Danse de Paris, where she won first prize at a ballet competition organised by the conservatoire in 1994.

After dancing with Boston Ballet on an exchange for half a year, Chapellier joined the Opéra de Nice, where she rose quickly to the rank of soloist and danced solo roles in works by John Cranko, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Michel Fokine and Léonide Massine.

From 1997 to 2011, she was a dancer with Dutch National Ballet, where she was promoted to soloist in 2006. She danced solos and other roles in the classical, neoclassical and modern repertoire and worked with numerous choreographers. For instance, she was cast for new creations by Hans van Manen, Ashley Page, Jacopo Godani, Nicolo Fonte, Dominique Dumais, David Dawson and Wayne Eagling.

During her last years as a dancer, Chapellier was already developing as a teacher and ballet mistress. She worked in that capacity with a great many companies and schools, including Dutch National Ballet, the Royal Swedish Ballet, Polish National Ballet, Slovenian National Ballet, Ballet de Marseille, Turkish National Ballet, Semperoper Ballett in Dresden, Noord Nederlands Toneel, the Young European Company, Kaméa Dance, the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, the Dutch National Ballet Academy and the Beer Sheva Conservatoire in Israel.

On ending her dancing career, she was appointed ballet master and director’s assistant with Compañía National de Danza in Madrid, where she rehearsed ballets by Jiří Kylián, William Forsythe, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and Juanjo Arqués. In 2014, she returned to Dutch National Ballet, where she has since held the post of ballet mistress. In recent years, besides the full-length classics, she has also rehearsed ballets by George Balanchine, Michel Fokine, Rudi van Dantzig, Sir Frederick Ashton, Alexei Ratmansky, Christopher Wheeldon, Hans van Manen and John Neumeier, as well as new creations by David Dawson and Juanjo Arqués.