By Nora Dougherty Costello
Maria Tallchief: America's Prima Ballerina, Maria Tallchief with Larry Kaplan. New York: Holt and Company, 1997.
Born in Fairfax, Oklahoma Elizabeth Marie was the child of a full-blooded Osage father, Alexander Joseph Tall Chief and a Scots-Irish mother, Ruth Porter. Before Betty Marie, as Maria was known at home, was three years old, she had her first piano lesson. "I was very young when I started the piano. I think I was still in diapers!" she recalled. During their summers in Colorado, Betty Marie was taken to her first ballet lesson: "I practiced the piano for an hour before school in the morning and an hour after school in the afternoon and then we dashed into the car to get to our dancing lessons."
The first ballet performance she witnessed was that of Sergei Denham’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. "I think seeing the Ballet Russe was what started me thinking about becoming a dancer instead of a pianist." An audition with Denham’s Ballet Russe led to her professional debut in 1942 at 17 years of age. In 1944 George Balanchine joined Denham’s Company as resident choreographer and immediately noted the skills of Maria Tallchief, as she was known professionally. Her symbiotic relationship with Balanchine, who saw her as the embodiment of his work, proved to be one of the greatest collaborations in the world of ballet. They were married in 1946. While their personal relationship ended after six years, Balanchine and Tallchief remained lifelong friends and he continued to teach her and create roles for her.
In 1956 she married Henry Paschen, Jr. and their daughter Elise was born in 1959. She continued to perform with prestigious ballet companies all over the world, including the New York City Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet. She was honored in 1963 as Indian of the Year. Given the name Princes Wa-Xthe-Thonba: Princess Two Standards by her Grandmother Tall Chief, Maria Tallchief recalls, "By choosing it she was saying that while I was a ballerina with an important career on the stage, I was also her grandchild, an Osage woman and a daughter of the tribe."
It is very disappointing not to find more threads of reference to her Osage heritage and its influence woven into this autobiography. With only two pages devoted to the history of the Osage, one could surmise that these minimal references were the result of either her desire for privacy or her stated desire to be identified as a ballerina with Native American heritage rather than a Native American ballerina.
The primary contribution of this autobiography is a definitive account of a central time in the life of George Balanchine that has not previously been chronicled. Tallchief reveals a very intimate picture of Balanchine as choreographer, teacher, husband and friend, recollections that should be of great interest to dance enthusiasts, historians and critics.
While this autobiography provides the reader with some insights into her life and many insights into her work, her recollections have an exclusionary air to them--a sort of tunnel vision that sees life and people only in the context of ballet, the primary driving force of her life. The excitement and enthusiasm that Maria Tallchief brought to her performances does not translate into her autobiography. Written with Larry Kaplan and under-illustrated, this book presents a somewhat cursory look at her life in a rather cut-and-dried style. The index is an inadequate reference source and there is no bibliography.
To learn more about Maria Tallchief and other ballerinas of Native American heritage, we suggest that you read American Indian Ballerinas by Lili Cockerille Livingston.
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