Celebrating Maria Tallchief: Balanchine Muse and America's Ballerina | Playbill

Classic Arts Features Celebrating Maria Tallchief: Balanchine Muse and America's Ballerina

The Native American ballerina will be celebrated in February at New York City Ballet.

Maria Tallchief dancing Firebird at New York City Ballet in 1949 Stanley Weisenfeld

Just before the premiere of Firebird, ballerina Maria Tallchief sensed disaster. She was to dance the title role, but a recent tonsillectomy had left her drained and sluggish. During the final dress rehearsal, a flying lift with partner Francisco Moncion had gone poorly, upsetting Moncion. Tallchief’s costume arrived from designer Barbara Karinska’s studio only a few hours before showtime, and neither Karinska nor George Balanchine were happy with the way it fit. The mood backstage at the then-fledgling New York City Ballet was tense.

But when the New York City Center curtain rose on November 27, 1949, Firebird seemed to cohere around Tallchief’s bravura performance. Her cool elegance brought glamor and mystery to Balanchine’s pyrotechnical choreography. In the shimmering Berceuse solo, her eloquent arms and hands held the audience spellbound. (“Port de bras [is] the soul of the dancer,” Tallchief said in the documentary Dancing for Mr. B.) At the end of the ballet, audience members screamed and stomped their feet, shouting “Tallchief! Tallchief!”

Years later, Balanchine would tell Tallchief’s daughter, the poet Elise Paschen, that without Firebird’s success, New York City Ballet would not have survived. And “the reason it was so good,” he said to Paschen, “is because your mother was so wonderful in it.”

Much of Balanchine’s grand vision for American ballet crystallized in Tallchief’s dancing. She was New York City Ballet’s first big star, and one of the first American-born ballerinas to receive international acclaim. In her speed and daring, her power and grandeur, Balanchine saw America. In her Native American heritage, too: Tallchief’s father was Osage, which fascinated Balanchine. When Balanchine and Tallchief married in 1946, he told her he “finally felt like a real American,” she wrote in her memoir.

Wife, muse, symbol: They must have been complicated roles to inhabit simultaneously. But Tallchief was always proud to be Osage, and, as one of the first Native American ballerinas, became both a trailblazer and a role model. Early in her career, Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo director Sergei Denham asked her to Russify her last name, as was then the fashion, to Tallchieva; she refused. In 1953, the Osage Tribal Council gave her the title Princess Wa-Xthe-Thonba, or Two Standards—reflecting her life in two worlds, as a member of the Osage Nation and as a ballet dancer.

“I think she upended America’s notion of what ballet was, and who a ballerina was,” Paschen said. Tallchief and Balanchine ended their marriage in 1950, but he continued to create ballets showcasing her remarkable range.

She was an invincible virtuoso in 1950’s Sylvia: Pas de Deux, a tour de force that requires the ballerina to do “everything short of back flips,” as the critic Walter Terry wrote. In 1952’s Scotch Symphony, which evokes the Romantic ballet La Sylphide, Balanchine highlighted her softness and vulnerability; the ballet’s heroine is not a conqueror but a dreamer.

Appearances on television and film brought Tallchief even more widespread popularity. She danced the Sylvia duet on CBS in 1951, wearing rubber strips on her pointe shoes to keep from slipping on the concrete studio floor. When she played ballerina Anna Pavlova in MGM’s 1952 film Million Dollar Mermaid, the director and producer asked her to liven up Pavlova’s signature “Dying Swan” variation by interpolating steps from Firebird. Tallchief’s first performance after giving birth to Paschen in 1959 was dancing Scotch Symphony on NBC’s Bell Telephone Hour.

Though Tallchief’s legacy extends beyond New York City Ballet—she also danced with several other companies—after retiring from performance in 1966, she dedicated herself to the preservation of Balanchine’s legacy. Settling in Chicago, she founded the ballet school of the Chicago Lyric Opera, where she taught Balanchine’s technique. Later, she directed the Chicago City Ballet, which, though short-lived, had a repertory full of Balanchine ballets. The Firebird became a keeper of the flame. Tallchief, who died in 2013, would have turned 100 this year. Her influence remains pervasive, and her association with Balanchine indelible. The U.S. Mint released a Tallchief quarter in 2023, featuring an image of Tallchief in her Firebird costume and her name written in both English and Osage orthography. Last fall, Barbie introduced a Maria Tallchief doll, wearing a dress modeled after the Firebird tutu.

“It was her passion, her driving force, to translate the beauty of Balanchine’s choreography,” Paschen says. “She wanted to continue that tradition—to continue the trajectory of the work that had been instilled in her.”

In honor of Maria Tallchief, NYCB will perform Scotch Symphony, Sylvia: Pas de Deux, and Firebird on Feb. 5, 8, 11, 13, and 18. Visit https://www.nycballet.com/.

 
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