“New ideas are essential, but we must retain respect for the art of ballet, and that means the artist too, or else it is no longer an art form.” Maria Tallchief
Maria Tallchief was a Native American from the Osage Nation and the first American prima ballerina.
Elizabeth Marie Tall Chief (she later changed her name to Maria Tallchief) was born in 1925 in Oklahoma. She grew up on the Osage reservation in Fairfax, Oklahoma, where her father’s family had long been leaders of the tribe. In the summer, her family traveled to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where she and her sister Majorie took their first ballet lessons. She also took lessons in Oklahoma, but her early training was terrible.
Maria was put in pointe shoes–the type of ballet shoe made for going en pointe, meaning the dancer is on the tips of their toes–at the age of 5, which was dangerously early and could have permanently damaged her feet. The bones in the feet do not fully mature until people are around 15 years old, and going en pointe before then can lead to crippling pain and ultimately, permanent foot damage.
“It's a miracle I wasn't permanently harmed,” Maria said in her autobiography, Maria Tallchief: America's Prima Ballerina.
Maria was incredibly bright and skipped two grades in elementary school and was an accomplished pianist at an early age. She and her sister continued to study dance. They also performed at Oklahoma county fairs, a humiliating experience where they “dressed like Indians” and performed a stereotypical “Indian dance” that did not resemble anything that their tribe, the Osage people, wore or did.
“It wasn’t remotely authentic. Traditionally, women didn’t dance in Indian tribal ceremonies. But I had toe shoes on under my moccasins, and we both wore fringed buckskin outfits, headbands with feathers, and bells on our legs. We’d enter from opposite wings, greet each other, and start moving to a tom-tom rhythm,” Maria explained.
When she was eight years old, her family moved to Los Angeles so Maria and Marjorie could audition for Hollywood musicals. The girls enrolled in a private school in Beverly Hills, where they experienced racial discrimination from their fellow students.
“A few made war whoops whenever they saw me and asked why I didn’t wear feathers or if my father took scalps. After a while, they became accustomed to me but the experience was painful. Eventually, I turned the spelling of my last name into one word. Everything in school was in strict alphabetical order and I wanted to avoid confusion," Maria explained.
While living in Los Angeles, their mother asked the owner of a local drugstore where her daughters should take dance lessons, and he suggested Ernest Belcher, father of the film star Marge Champion. The girls took lessons from Belcher, an excellent teacher, and eventually enrolled with Bronislava Nijinska, a famous Russian choreographer who had opened a studio in LA. Though the girls landed minor parts in Hollywood films, such as Presenting Lily Mars, neither of them liked it.
In 1942, when Maria was 17 years old, she moved to New York City, where she began auditioning for different dance companies. Since World War II was raging in Europe, many European ballet companies, including the world famous Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, had temporarily relocated to New York. After several failed auditions with other companies, Maria was hired by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. While she was traveling with the company, she began working with one of their choreographers, the legendary George Balanchine. Balanchine immediately recognized her talent and made her the star of most of his dances.
It was around that time that Maria was encouraged to change her last name from Tallchief to Tallchiev to sound more European. She declined. She would not erase her heritage.
When the company returned to New York, George Balanchine surprised Maria by asking her to marry him. He was 42 years old and she was 21. She declined at first, saying she needed time to think about it, but the next day she agreed. Her parents were against the match and refused to attend the ceremony. Though the marriage only lasted five years, their professional collaboration continued for many years.
In 1946, George Balanchine received support from Lincoln Kirstein to start his own ballet company, the New York City Ballet (originally called the Ballet Society) and he made Maria its star, making her the first American prima ballerina and the first Native American prima ballerina. Balanchine’s daring choreography combined with Maria’s elegance and athleticism revolutionized how dance was performed.
The signature role that Balanchine choreographed for Maria was The Firebird, which she first performed with the New York City Ballet in 1949.
Maria performed around the world with The New York City Ballet and eventually left the company and joined the American Ballet Theater (ABT). While on tour with ABT, she became the first American dancer to perform at the famous Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. Maria also appeared on numerous TV shows, including The Ed Sullivan Show, and in an Esther Williams movie titled Million Dollar Mermaid.
Eventually, she retired at the age of 41, saying she wanted to end her ballet career in her prime. But her contributions to dance did not stop there. She married a businessman and moved to Chicago, where she became the Director of Ballet at the Lyric Opera and founded the short-lived Chicago Ballet Company (1981-1987) with her sister, Marjorie. And she often returned to New York to teach master classes. She received numerous awards for her contributions to dance, including being inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and receiving the Kennedy Center Honor for lifetime achievements in 1996.
After a lifetime of breaking down barriers and revolutionizing dance performance, Maria Tallchief passed away at the age of 88. Throughout her illustrious career, she challenged dangerous stereotypes of what Native Americans can be and do, becoming an artistic icon and beacon of hope to underrepresented dancers around the world.
And then next time you open your wallet, take a look at the quarters. Maria Tallchief will be featured on a United States Quarter as part of the 2023 American Women Quarters Series honoring acclaimed American Women.