[27/50] pictures of → Maria Tallchief with her daughter, Elise Paschen
Elizabeth Marie Tallchief, also known as Betty and Ki-He-Kah-Stah-Tsa Tall Chief, was an Osage prima ballerina – America’s first dancer to attain such a rank – and first principal dancer of the New York City Ballet. As a child, Betty and her sister took weekly ballet lessons in Oklahoma, a luxury that she was afforded as one of the daughters of a wealthy tribal leader – in Betty’s infancy, her family were firebombed as part of the Osage Reign of Terror, the systematic attempt by White ranchers to murder the Osage for their tribal headrights. From the time she was three years old, however, she trained as a dancer and became a fixture in Oklahoma’s vaudeville and rodeo circuit (which Betty hated, as she was afraid of bulls).
By 1933, the combination of a promise of child stardom for Betty and her sister Marjorie and the increasingly violent and sexual abuses of the eldest Tallchief brother led to Betty, Marjorie, and their parents resettling in Los Angeles. It was here that Betty trained under the legendary Bronislava Nijinska of the Ballet Russes; she worked with Nijinska all through high school. When she graduated at seventeen, she moved alone to New York City and joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. It was here that she became Maria; choreographer Agnes de Mille wanted her to “Russify” her name to Tallchieva, but Betty refused. Instead, she began to use a Russification of her middle name.
By 1944, she danced the lead in Nijinska’s Ancient Russia and the soloist in Le Beau Danube. It was also in 1944 that she was promoted to a soloist by the company’s new contract choreographer: Maria’s future husband, iconic choreographer, leading ballet mind of the 20th century, and noted raging misogynist George Balanchine. In 1947, she followed him to Paris and danced in the notoriously difficult (and gorgeous) composition Apollo, a performance for which she was praised – and heinously racially slurred – by the European press. When the couple returned to America in 1948 and Balanchine founded the New York City Ballet, Maria became America’s first prima ballerina and originated the spellbinding, unmatched role of the Firebird in Prokofiev’s eponymous ballet. She remained with the NYCB until 1960 (long outlasting her marriage to Balanchine), but she often took sabbaticals from her home company to guest-feature with other ballet companies: for an 18-month guest stay with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1954-1955, Maria became the highest-paid ballerina of the era.
After permanently leaving the NYCB in 1960, Maria joined the American Ballet Theater, and later, in 1966, the Hamburg Ballet. She retired from performance in 1968 after dancing the prima role in van Dyk’s Cinderella. She moved to Chicago where she became a noted art patron, dance teacher (including for one week to yours truly, in a conservatory workshop), and philanthropist; she served on the board of the Chicago Festival Ballet for 13 years, the Lyric Opera of Chicago for six years, and co-founded the short-lived Chicago City Ballet in 1981.
She died of complications from surgery in 2013 at the age of 88, but was immortalized by the Kennedy Center Honors in 1996 – and by the Osage nation’s granting her the title of “Princess Wa-Xthe-Thomba,” or the Woman of Two Worlds.