Paul Chalmer studied at the Canada’s National Ballet School and joined the National Ballet of Canada in 1979. His admiration for the work of choreographer John Cranko motivated him to join the Stuttgart Ballet in 1980 where he danced in many leading roles of the company’s repertoire.
He later joined Les Ballets de Monte Carlo as Danseur Etoile and has also danced with The English National Ballet, The Birmingham Royal Ballet, The Scottish Ballet, at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, the Teatro dell’ Opera di Roma, the L’Arena di Verona and at Teatro alla Scala, Milan. In 1999, Chalmer became Ballet Master of the Semperoper, Dresden and was invited to become Ballet Master at the Leipzig Ballet in 2001. Chalmer has also reaped successes as a choreographer. Collaborating with the Balletto dell 'Arena di Verona he created the ballet La Fille du Danube (1996), La Gitana (1996) and Il Talismano (1997) for which he was honoured with the Leonide Massine Award. For the Rome Opera Ballet, he has choreographed Lungo Viaggio (2000) for dancer Vladimir Vassiliev, The Sleeping Beauty (2002), La Gitana (2005), La Vestale (2006) and A Midsummer’s Night Dream (2007) as well as Chopin Racconta Chopin (2010) for Chopin’s 200th anniversary.
In 2009 Chalmer choreographed for the Madrid Dance Festival and for the St. Prex-Festival in Switzerland. In 2011, his ballet The Tchaikovsky Enigma for MaggioDanza opened the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino festival. From 2005 until 2010, Chalmer directed the Leipzig Ballet creating productions of Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, The Firebird, Giselle and Petrushka.
Chalmer’s new production of Prokofiev’s Cinderella was premiered in Poznan at the Teatr Wielki in 2014 and entered the repertoire of the Moravian-Silesian National Theatre in Ostrava in 2015. His new productions of The Nutcracker (2015) and Romeo and Juliet (2018) and was staged at the Opera Nova in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Last year, Chalmer created a new full-length ballet based on Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. It premiered in March, 2017 at the Moravian-Silesian National Theatre.