Maria Tallchief dies, a daughter of an Oklahoma oil family who grew up on an Indian reservation, found her way to New York and became one of the most brilliant American ballerinas of the 20th century, died on Thursday in Chicago. She was 88.
Her daughter, the poet Elise Paschen, confirmed the death. Ms. Tallchief lived in Chicago.
A former wife of the choreographer George Balanchine, Ms. Tallchief achieved renown with Balanchine’s New York City Ballet,
dazzling audiences with her speed, energy and fire. Indeed, the part
that catapulted her to acclaim, in 1949, was the title role in the
company’s version of Stravinsky’s “Firebird,” one of many that
Balanchine created for her.
The choreographer Jacques d’Amboise, who was a 15-year-old corps dancer
in Balanchine’s “Firebird” before becoming one of City Ballet’s stars,
compared Ms. Tallchief to two of the century’s greatest ballerinas:
Galina Ulanova of the Soviet Union and Margot Fonteyn of Britain.
“When you thought of Russian ballet, it was Ulanova,” he said an
interview on Friday. “With English ballet, it was Fonteyn. For American
ballet, it was Tallchief. She was grand in the grandest way.”
A daughter of an Osage Indian father and a Scottish-Irish mother, Ms.
Tallchief left Oklahoma at an early age, but she was long associated
with the state nevertheless. She was one of five dancers of Indian
heritage, all born at roughly the same time, who came to be called the
Oklahoma Indian ballerinas: the others included her younger sister,
Marjorie Tallchief, as well as Rosella Hightower, Moscelyne Larkin and
Yvonne Chouteau.
Growing up at a time when many American dancers adopted Russian stage
names, Ms. Tallchief, proud of her Indian heritage, refused to do so,
even though friends told her that it would be easy to transform
Tallchief into Tallchieva.
Elizabeth Marie Tallchief was born in Fairfax, Okla., in a small
hospital on Jan. 24, 1925. Her father, Alexander Joseph Tall Chief, was a
6-foot-2 full-blooded Osage Indian whom his daughters idolized and
women found strikingly handsome, Ms. Tallchief later wrote. (She and her
sister joined their surnames when they began dancing professionally.)
Her mother, the former Ruth Porter, met Mr. Tall Chief, a widower, while
visiting her sister, who was a cook and housekeeper for Mr. Tall
Chief’s mother.
“When Daddy was a boy, oil was discovered on Osage land, and overnight
the tribe became rich,” Ms. Tallchief recounted in “Maria Tallchief:
America’s Prima Ballerina,” her 1997 autobiography
written with Larry Kaplan. “As a young girl growing up on the Osage
reservation in Fairfax, Okla., I felt my father owned the town. He had
property everywhere. The local movie theater on Main Street, and the
pool hall opposite, belonged to him. Our 10-room, terracotta-brick house
stood high on a hill overlooking the reservation.”
She had her first ballet lessons in Colorado Springs, where the family
had a summer home. She also studied piano and, blessed with perfect
pitch, contemplated becoming a concert pianist.
Readmore nytimes
Tolong Share ya ^^
