RIP, Maria Tallchief

The greatest American ballerina of the first half of the Twentieth Century!:

Maria Tallchief, a dancer of electrifying passion and technical ability who forged a pathbreaking career that took her from an Oklahoma Indian reservation to world acclaim and who was a crucial artistic inspiration for choreographer George Balanchine, her first husband, died April 11 at a hospital in Chicago. She was 88.

...Ms. Tallchief — born Elizabeth Marie Tall Chief — was of American Indian and Irish-Scottish descent. In a career that flourished from the 1940s to the 1960s at what became the New York City Ballet, she helped break down ethnic barriers in the world of dance and was one of the first American ballet stars in a field long dominated by Russian and European dancers.

After retiring in 1965, she settled in Chicago and taught at the Chicago Lyric Opera Ballet and founded the Chicago City Ballet.

When she received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1996, she recalled the pressure she faced as an American dancer. One impresario insisted that she Russianize her name to Tallchieva. “Never!” she said, although she was open to the concession of changing her surname to one word and to use Maria, a variation on her middle name.

From the start, her dancing was characterized by precise footwork and an athleticism that dazzled without being excessive. Her regality and grace won critical admirers, as well as the attention of Balanchine, who was consistently impressed by her musicality, which had been honed through childhood piano lessons.

Balanchine revolutionized ballet by creating sleek, streamlined works that demanded athleticism, speed and attack like no choreography before them. “I always thought Balanchine was more of a musician even than a choreographer, and perhaps that’s why he and I connected,” she told The Washington Post.

Balanchine had a history of blurring the lines between the personal and the professional. He was known to fixate on one woman, making her his artistic obsession and romantic partner, only to eventually abandon her when a new talent came along. Ms. Tallchief became part of this pattern after the two married in 1946, when she was 21 and the Russian-born Balanchine was 42. It was Balanchine’s third marriage.

The next year, Ms. Tallchief accompanied her husband to the Paris Opera Ballet, where he was invited to serve as a guest choreographer and where she would become the first American to dance with that troupe.

She wasn’t greeted very warmly by company members, but she easily won over French audiences. No matter where she performed, Ms. Tallchief wanted to be judged on the merits of her dancing alone. “Above all, I wanted to be appreciated as a prima ballerina who happened to be a Native American, never as someone who was an American Indian ballerina,” she once wrote.

Ms. Tallchief originated roles as the lead dancer in Balanchine’s ballet “The Firebird” in 1949 and in “Swan Lake” in 1951, along with such works as “Symphony in C,” “Orpheus” and “Scotch Symphony.” Her virtuosic execution of these dances — executed with fiery, sometimes erotic fervor, while maintaining a lightness of foot — helped establish Balanchine as the era’s most prominent and influential choreographer.

One of her best-known roles was that of the Sugar Plum Fairy in Balanchine’s 1954 production of “The Nutcracker,” then considered an obscure ballet. Balanchine revamped it in a number of ways, most notably by adding numerous children to the cast, including in the central roles of Marie and the Nutcracker Prince. Ms. Tallchief’s commanding performance helped transform the show into a American holiday season staple and the ballet world’s most perennially reliable box-office draw.

...Ms. Tallchief and her sister studied dance with David Lichine, a student of Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, as well as Bronislava Nijinska, the sister of celebrated dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. Upon meeting Nijinska for the first time, Ms. Tallchief observed that she “was a personification of what ballet was all about. And I looked at her, and I knew this was what I wanted to do,” she told CNN television host Larry King.

After graduating from Beverly Hills High School in 1942, Ms. Tallchief joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, a troupe that included some of the artists from the esteemed Ballets Russes, which had recently disbanded after the death of its director, Sergei Diaghilev. Balanchine was also affiliated with the Ballet Russe.

...Of her long career with Balanchine and her key roles in some of his most beloved dances, she once told an interviewer, “I was in the middle of magic, in the presence of genius. And thank God I knew it.”

Maria Tallchief was the most-notable of the five Native American ballerinas from Oklahoma, who made such a profound mark in the history of ballet. Yvonne Chouteau is the best at describing that world.