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Derek Purnell, who has died aged 71 of a brain tumour, had a career focused on the arts and heritage encompassing both performance and administration. He had a true sense of purpose and the ability to inspire his colleagues, and always took an interest in their work.
In 1991 he took up the position of chief executive of Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB), working alongside Peter Wright, the artistic director, and from 1995 with David Bintley. In a tribute, Bintley noted that the decade he worked alongside Purnell at the BRB was “the happiest and most fulfilling of my professional life”. Having danced with Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, the touring wing of the Royal Ballet, for a decade from 1973, and having become a dancers’ union representative, when Purnell retired from performing he trained in arts administration at City, University of London.
He then returned to Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, where he managed the company’s 1988 tour to Asia, and was given the task of organising the relocation of the company to Birmingham to make its home at the Hippodrome. Knowing the working conditions dancers aspired to having danced at theatres with less-than-ideal backstage facilities, he ensured appropriate studios and custom-built facilities were provided there.
He became a valued ambassador for Birmingham as a place to work, reassuring the dancers and staff who would be leaving London. In 1990 the move was complete, and the company became Birmingham Royal Ballet. Purnell also played a leading role in securing BRB’s independence from the Royal Opera House.
In 2005 he moved from Birmingham to a small village in Norfolk, and began a career as a freelance consultant. He helped to promote the arts in the county and worked with Norfolk Dance. During this period he suffered with and recovered from from throat cancer.
When the opportunity to join the Wallace Collection as director of public engagement arose in 2014, he moved to London. At this museum housing fine art in Manchester Square, off Oxford Street, he championed collaborations between art, music and dance and encouraged the development of outreach programmes.
Three years later he became chief operations officer. He missed being involved with events, so in July 2020 he became director of Strawberry Hill House and Gardens, Twickenham. Strawberry Hill, Horrace Walpole’s 18th-century gothic house had been lovingly restored in the decade from 2004 and Purnell knew he had to balance preserving the building and keeping it alive.
He enjoyed being involved in making new acquisitions and loans; a portrait of Catherine de Medici, whom Walpole admired, was added to the gallery, and a fishtub from Walpole’s collection – in which his cat was said to have drowned, inspiring Thomas Gray’s Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes – was also displayed.
Purnell supported a range of exhibitions both in the house and online, including one on gothic toy theatres, and community activities in the garden.
Born and brought up in Bristol, Derek claimed that the port city aroused his curiosity about history. He was the younger of two sons of Betty (nee Cornish), an office worker, and John Purnell, who worked for Rolls-Royce. Derek was educated at Monks Park comprehensive, where he enjoyed the benefit of inspiring teachers of English and art; he also studied ballet, taking classes with Bettie Vowles.
At 16 he was accepted into the Royal Ballet upper school, from where he graduated to Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet in 1973. He was a versatile performer whose height was an advantage. At one performance he would mime older characters including the Duke of Courland in Giselle or the Russian Merchant in Léonide Massine’s La Boutique Fantasque, at the next he revealed his technical skills in the pas de six from Les Rendezvous, the Gypsy Girl’s Lover in The Two Pigeons, Lysander in The Dream and even a Tomato in Pas de Légumes – all ballets by Frederick Ashton.
Purnell was also noted for dancing choreography by George Balanchine. While a leading dancer in the corps de ballet, he was chosen for the male lead, partnering Vyvyan Lorrayne, in Concerto Barocco, of which the Times critic wrote: “Derek Purnell in the slow movement supports her with a wholly admirable reticence, almost achieving the illusion that it is Bach’s music rather than his arms causing her to soar above the stage.”
In 1974 he married Elizabeth Cunliffe, a dancer and Benesh movement notator, with whom he had a daughter, Louise. That marriage was dissolved, and in 1982 he married Aileen Morrison, a viola player who worked with many orchestras. They met when she was playing with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet orchestra. Their daughter Kirsty now teaches on several dance outreach programmes.
Purnell retained his love of dance, serving as a governor of the Royal Ballet, and was active on several committees, including serving as vice-chair of the board of trustees of the Royal Academy of Dance. In 2024 Purnell was on the verge of taking up the position of executive director of the Frederick Ashton Foundation.
He is survived by Aileen and his two daughters.
