William Boyce, it was made for Ballet Rambert in 1938. Over the next two years, he contributed three of his best works to the company's repertory: Czernyana (1939), to the piano exercises of Carl Czerny; Enigma Variations (1939), to the score by Edward Elgar; and Peter and the Wolf (1940), to the music and text of Sergei Prokofiev. All these works displayed his facility for witty invention that would characterize many of his later ballets. He also created Czerny 2 (1941), a second version of his popular hit, a series of dances caricaturing different kinds of ballet. Combined with its predecessor under the title Czernyana, it remained in the Rambert repertory for many years. During the war years in England—September 1939 to May 1945—Staff served as a captain in the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders but was released temporarily to choreograph Peter and the Wolf and Czerny 2. Upon completion of his military service, Staff returned to his homeland in 1946 and joined the South African National Ballet in Cape Town. There he danced in his own ballets and produced works in which he had appeared in England, notably Nijinsky's L'Après-midi d'un Faune and Howard's Death and the Maiden. Returning to Britain in 1947, Staff spent the next few years as an international freelance. He served as resident choreographer of the Metropolitan Ballet (1947–1948), toured Australia with Ballet Rambert (1948), toured the United States and Canada with Sadler's Wells Ballet (1949), and was subsequently appointed ballet master and choreographer at the Empire Theatre (1950) on London's Leicester Square. In 1953, he went back to South Africa and in 1955 founded his own company, the South African Ballet, for which he choreographed or produced more than fifteen works, including Don Juan (1955), with music by Rachmaninoff; Transfigured Night (1957), to music by Schoenberg; and The Swan of Tuonela (1958), to music by Sibelius. In 1963, the South African government established four professional ballet companies, one in each of the four provinces, and Staff would eventually work with them all: the companies of the Cape Performing Arts Board (CAPAB Ballet), the Natal Performing Arts Council (NAPAC Ballet), the Performing Arts Council of the Transvaal (PACT Ballet), and the Performing Arts Council of the Orange Free State (PACOFS Ballet). For CAPAB Ballet, based in Cape Town, he mounted Romeo and Juliet (1964), to the Prokofiev score, and for NAPAC Ballet, in Durban, he set