Apollo 65 (1965), to music by Benjamin Britten. Moving on to the Transvaal in 1966, he worked in Johannesburg until 1968 as resident producer and choreographer with PACT Ballet under the direction of Faith de Villiers. These years were especially productive. Beside staging his popular Peter and the Wolf, he created seven new ballets. Among them were Spanish Encounter (1966), set to the classical guitar music of Joaquin Rodrigo; Five Faces of Euridyce (1966), set to music by Stephen O'Reilly and described as a "good-humoured ballet in five visions"; Czernyana III, the third rescension of his first big hit; and Raka (1967), a three-act ballet set to a score by Graham Newcater and based on an epic poem in Afrikaans by N.P. van Wyk Louw. Raka proved such a success that it was soon made into a film that was distributed worldwide by Twentieth Century Fox. Thereafter, Staff was artistic director of PACOFS Ballet in Bloemfontein from 1969 until his death in 1971. Among the six ballets he created for this company were two notable works made in 1970: Mantis Moon, based on a Bushman legend and set to music by Hans Maske, and Séance, derived from Menotti's opera The Medium but set to music by Britten. Staff's unfinished work, The Rain Queen (1971), set to a commissioned score by Newcater, was planned as the first full-length ballet with an indigenous South African theme. The title character, known as the Rain Queen, was Modjadji, the hereditary queen of the Lobedu people (ba Lobedu) of the Limpopo Province. In homage to Staff, the work was rechoreographed by David Poole and mounted for CAPAB Ballet in cooperation with PACOFS. Personal life Staff married four times. He wed his fellow Ballet Rambert dancer Elisabeth Schooling in 1942, and she danced in many of his early works. He next married English dancer Jaqueline St. Clere, followed by South African musical comedy actress Heather Lloyd-Jones. All three of these marriages ended in divorce. Staff's fourth wife was South African dancer Veronica Paeper, who became a prolific choreographer in her own right as director of CAPAB Ballet, later known as Cape Town City Ballet. Each of Staff's four wives bore him a son. References 1918 births 1971 deaths South African choreographers South African male ballet dancers Ballet choreographers Rambert Dance Company dancers