January 24, 1925 – Birth of Maria Tallchief, First Native American “Prima Ballerina”

Maria TallChief was born as Elizabeth Marie Tallchief on an Osage Indian Reservation in Oklahoma on this day in history. Her father was a full-blooded Osage, and her mother was a Scots-Irish woman. Maria says she was born with music in her heart. Her mother found a piano teacher and dance teacher for her and her sister Marjorie, who later became an accomplished ballerina in her own right.

Maria Tallchief from the April 1961 issue of Dance Magazine

Among the Osage at that time, women did not dance – only the men. But even dances by the men were forbidden by the whites, who believed that the religious ceremonies of Native Americans were a sign of ignorance. In addition, dancing by the men inspired fear in whites. “The Ghost Dance” by the Lakota, a religious movement in the late 19th Century, was a rite involving drums, dancing, and prayer. It made the whites very nervous; they feared the dance was just a precursor to an Indian uprising. The Ghost Dance was thus the “excuse” for the 1890 massacre by the U.S. Army of mostly old men, women, and children, at Wounded Knee on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Maria’s parents decided that her daughters could not get the education they needed in Oklahoma, so in 1933 the family moved to Los Angeles, California. The girls were enrolled in music lessons and dance school. When Maria was twelve, she was asked by her parents to chose one avocation or the other, and she picked dance.

She began to train with Madame Nijinska, the sister of Nijinsky, the most famous ballet dancer in the world at that time.

At age 17, she moved to New York City in search of a spot with a major ballet company, and spent the next five years with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, where she met legendary choreographer George Balanchine. When Balanchine co-founded what would become the New York City Ballet in 1946, Tallchief became the company’s first star. The Encyclopedia of World Biography reports:

Under Balanchine, Tallchief’s reputation grew, and she was eventually given the title of ballerina. During this time, Tallchief married Balanchine. When he moved to Paris, France, she went with him.”

New York City Ballet
Maria Tallchief
Photo credit: Walter Owen, courtesy NYCB Archives

Her marriage with Balanchine only lasted from 1946 to 1950. Even so, Tallchief remained with the New York City Ballet until 1965. She also danced with other companies however, including the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and the American Ballet Theater. She appeared with Rudolf Nureyev on television and on tour in Europe and made guest appearances with the Chicago Opera Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet and the Hamburg Ballet. She retired from the stage in 1966.

Tallchief had two other marriages following her first to Balanchine: she was married to Elmourza Natirboff, an aviator, from 1952 to 1954, and in 1956 she married Henry Paschen Jr., a Chicago businessman responsible for some of the iconic construction projects in Chicago.

Tallchief founded the ballet school of the Chicago Lyric Opera in the mid-1970s and was the artistic director of the Chicago City Ballet, which presented its first season in 1981.

Among her honors besides the designation of “prima ballerina,” she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and received a Kennedy Center Honor for Lifetime Achievement in 1996.

She was also honored by the people of Oklahoma with multiple statues and an honorific day. She is among four Native American ballerinas depicted in “Flight of Spirit”, a mural in the Oklahoma Capitol building (one of the four is her sister Marjorie). She remained proud of her Osage heritage; even though friends encouraged her to take a Russian stage name and pretend to be Russian, Tallchief refused to do so.

In December 2012, Tallchief broke her hip. She died on April 11, 2013 from complications stemming from the injury.

Maria Tallchief (foreground), one of the Five Moons sculptures at the Tulsa Historical Society.