Grigoriy Chapkis Ukrainian dancer and choreographer Date of Birth: 24.02.1930 Country: Ukraine

Biography of Grigory Chapkis

Grigory Chapkis was a Ukrainian dancer and choreographer, as well as a Merited Artist of Ukraine. He was born in 1930 in a large family in Kishinev, which was then part of annexed Bessarabia, Romania. His father, Nikolai Nikolaevich Chepesku (1894-1946), was a shoemaker, and his mother, Berta Iosifovna Chapkis, originally from Odessa, was a housewife. Soon, the family moved to Bendery, where Grigory joined a local Palace of Pioneers dance circle in 1940. During the Great Patriotic War, the family was evacuated to Kazakhstan, where Grigory's older brother, Iosif Chapkis, died on the front.

After the war, the family settled in Kiev, where Grigory Chapkis entered a railway school and joined the song and dance ensemble of the "Tolstovki" Society. From 1946 to 1972, he worked in the Ukrainian Song and Dance Ensemble (later the State Dance Ensemble of the Ukrainian SSR under the direction of P.P. Virsky). From 1949, he became the first ballet master of the Ivan Franko Theatre in Kiev, and in the 1980s, he served as the deputy director of the Drama and Comedy Theatre on the Left Bank of the Dnieper. In 1988-1990, he lived in Italy.

Grigory Chapkis was a judge and one of the leaders of the television project "Dancing with the Stars" and the Chapkis Dance School on the Kiev channel 1+1. He is also the author of the book "Dance and Love: The Secret of Longevity". Additionally, he played the role of a criminal authority in the film "Lombard" directed by Lyubomir Kobylychuk-Levitsky (2008).

Grigory Chapkis had two children. His daughter, Liliya Grigoryevna (born 1968), is a choreographer in Italy, and his son, Grigory Grigoryevich (Greg Chapkis, born 1979), is a hip-hop choreographer in San Francisco.