* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Monday, September 29, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Good Deed Entertainment Acquires Worldwide Rights To Liza Mandelup’s Documentary ‘Caterpillar’ – Deadline

    Good Deed Entertainment Lands Global Rights to Liza Mandelup’s Captivating Documentary ‘Caterpillar

    Danielle Fishel Explains Why Being on “DWTS” Makes Her Feel ‘Like It’s 1994 Again’ Filming “Boy Meets World” (Exclusive) – Yahoo

    Danielle Fishel Explains Why Being on “DWTS” Makes Her Feel ‘Like It’s 1994 Again’ Filming “Boy Meets World” (Exclusive) – Yahoo

    Jussie Smollett Claims He Was ‘Disrespected’ on the ‘Special Forces’ Season Premiere – Yahoo

    Jussie Smollett Opens Up About Feeling ‘Disrespected’ During the ‘Special Forces’ Season Premiere

    TicketSmarter Fall Entertainment Guide – Eastern Illinois University Athletics

    TicketSmarter Fall Entertainment Guide – Eastern Illinois University Athletics

    Cardi B Adds More Dates to Little Miss Drama Tour: ‘Y’all Making Me Work’ – Yahoo

    Cardi B Extends Little Miss Drama Tour: “Y’all Making Me Work

    ‘Today’: Sheinelle Jones Thanks Katie Couric for Support After Husband’s Death – CBS 19 News

    Sheinelle Jones Expresses Heartfelt Thanks to Katie Couric for Support After Husband’s Passing

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Virginia Tech hosts annual New Music + Technology Festival this week – Cardinal News

    Virginia Tech Kicks Off Exciting Annual New Music and Technology Festival This Week

    Why I gave the world wide web away for free | Tim Berners-Lee – The Guardian

    Why I Decided to Make the World Wide Web Free for Everyone | Tim Berners-Lee

    From shale to steam: Fossil fuel technology boosts clean geothermal energy – Washington Examiner

    From Shale to Steam: How Fossil Fuel Technology is Powering a Clean Geothermal Energy Revolution

    How Sustainable Technology is Shaping a Greener Future – Technology Magazine

    How Sustainable Technology is Driving the Revolution Toward a Greener Future

    Aurora police hope to add facial recognition technology to crime-fighting tools – CBS News

    Aurora Police Aim to Boost Crime-Fighting with New Facial Recognition Technology

    Autonomous Solutions shows off cutting-edge technology for the public – Cache Valley Daily

    Autonomous Solutions Unveils Cutting-Edge Technology for the Public

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Good Deed Entertainment Acquires Worldwide Rights To Liza Mandelup’s Documentary ‘Caterpillar’ – Deadline

    Good Deed Entertainment Lands Global Rights to Liza Mandelup’s Captivating Documentary ‘Caterpillar

    Danielle Fishel Explains Why Being on “DWTS” Makes Her Feel ‘Like It’s 1994 Again’ Filming “Boy Meets World” (Exclusive) – Yahoo

    Danielle Fishel Explains Why Being on “DWTS” Makes Her Feel ‘Like It’s 1994 Again’ Filming “Boy Meets World” (Exclusive) – Yahoo

    Jussie Smollett Claims He Was ‘Disrespected’ on the ‘Special Forces’ Season Premiere – Yahoo

    Jussie Smollett Opens Up About Feeling ‘Disrespected’ During the ‘Special Forces’ Season Premiere

    TicketSmarter Fall Entertainment Guide – Eastern Illinois University Athletics

    TicketSmarter Fall Entertainment Guide – Eastern Illinois University Athletics

    Cardi B Adds More Dates to Little Miss Drama Tour: ‘Y’all Making Me Work’ – Yahoo

    Cardi B Extends Little Miss Drama Tour: “Y’all Making Me Work

    ‘Today’: Sheinelle Jones Thanks Katie Couric for Support After Husband’s Death – CBS 19 News

    Sheinelle Jones Expresses Heartfelt Thanks to Katie Couric for Support After Husband’s Passing

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Virginia Tech hosts annual New Music + Technology Festival this week – Cardinal News

    Virginia Tech Kicks Off Exciting Annual New Music and Technology Festival This Week

    Why I gave the world wide web away for free | Tim Berners-Lee – The Guardian

    Why I Decided to Make the World Wide Web Free for Everyone | Tim Berners-Lee

    From shale to steam: Fossil fuel technology boosts clean geothermal energy – Washington Examiner

    From Shale to Steam: How Fossil Fuel Technology is Powering a Clean Geothermal Energy Revolution

    How Sustainable Technology is Shaping a Greener Future – Technology Magazine

    How Sustainable Technology is Driving the Revolution Toward a Greener Future

    Aurora police hope to add facial recognition technology to crime-fighting tools – CBS News

    Aurora Police Aim to Boost Crime-Fighting with New Facial Recognition Technology

    Autonomous Solutions shows off cutting-edge technology for the public – Cache Valley Daily

    Autonomous Solutions Unveils Cutting-Edge Technology for the Public

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Science

She was an Osage dancer. She was also America’s first prima ballerina.

October 28, 2023
in Science
She was an Osage dancer. She was also America’s first prima ballerina.
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

ByErin Blakemore

Published October 27, 2023

• 9 min read

When Maria Tallchief took to the stage, she didn’t just dance—she flew. Athletic and graceful, she stretched, hovered, and almost levitated, riveting audiences and embodying the wonder of ballet.

“We are always aware that the air is her true milieu,” dance critic John Martin wrote of the dancer in 1949.

Now, a decade after her death, American ballet icon Maria Tallchief has once again taken flight, this time on the reverse side of a U.S. quarter. It’s an honor she earned as America’s first prima ballerina—and one of the most recognizable Native Americans of modern times.

Oklahoma roots

She was born Elizabeth Marie Tall Chief on Osage Nation land in Fairfax, Oklahoma, to an Osage father and Scotch-Irish mother in 1925. Osage members then owned a fortune in oil wealth—in part thanks to her great-grandfather, who had helped the tribe secure mineral rights on their land earlier in the century.

Those rights presented dangers to the Osage Nation, however; some white settlers targeted and even murdered Osage to access their oil rights. Tall Chief’s family was no exception: A young cousin, Pearl, lost her entire family in a firebombing and was targeted by men who attempted to steal the oil fortune she inherited.

(This is the true story of the Osage murders.)

Yet Betty Marie, as she was called in childhood, grew up feeling “like my father owned the town,” as she wrote in her 1997 biography. She and her younger sister Marjorie went to private school and took piano and dance lessons thanks to their mother, who dreamed of stardom for her girls. In the 1930s the family moved to California so they could pursue dance and music.

As a student in Beverly Hills, she was teased by classmates who made fun of Native Americans and pretended not to understand her last name. “After a while, they became accustomed to me, but the experience was painful,” she later recalled. “Eventually I turned the spelling of my last name into one word.”

A young ballerina

In California, Tallchief began seriously studying ballet with legendary choreographer and teacher Bronislava Nijinska, and fell in love with the strict art form. Soon, she was performing at the Hollywood Bowl and danced in a Judy Garland movie.

Her big break came after high school in 1942, when she joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo on a tour of Canada and the U.S. As it toured, the company debuted new ballets, promoted avant-garde composers and choreographers, and breathed new life into the art form, introducing ballet to people across the continent.

At the time, ballet was largely seen as an elite, largely European tradition, dominated by Russian dancers. No American woman had ever been recognized as a “prima ballerina assoluta,” the highest honor within the profession. The Ballet Russe helped bring the art form closer to home.

Still the company’s American dancers were pressured to change their names to sound “more Russian”—and Tallchief was encouraged to change her last name to Tallchieva. But she refused. Though she eventually adopted her middle name as her first, she would not abandon her roots. “Tallchief was my heritage, and I was proud of it,” she later wrote.

“She was ferocious in her loyalty and determination,” says poet and editor Elise Paschen, Tallchief’s daughter.

Marriage and musehood

That determination caught the eye of one of the world’s most famous choreographers, George Balanchine. They married in 1946.

“I was his wife, but I also was his ballerina,” she later wrote. “He was my husband, but he was also my choreographer. He was a poet and I was his muse.” She followed him to Paris, becoming the first American to dance with the Paris Opera Ballet. Everywhere she danced, she turned heads, and Balanchine cast her in ever more spectacular roles.

(Ukraine’s ballet dancers are a “voice of resistance.”)

In 1949, Tallchief danced the most spectacular of all: the title role in Balanchine’s revival of The Firebird for the newly founded New York City Ballet. Composed by Igor Stravinsky and featuring sets designed by Marc Chagall, the ballet was dynamic and passionate. It was the perfect vehicle for Tallchief.

“Everybody had to go see this amazing, gorgeous creature,” dance critic Jordan Levin later remembered. Critics, and the public, raved about her performance. “Maria Tallchief…merits the style of prima ballerina assoluta,” wrote a critic in The Guardian, referring to the highest rank for females in the world of ballet. She took curtain call after curtain call as the entire audience shouted her name.

The career that followed was nothing short of stratospheric. Tallchief now symbolized a new era for American ballet. Vibrant, graceful, and powerful, she became a household name. So did many of her roles, from the Sugar Plum Fairy in Balanchine’s revival of The Nutcracker to the Swan Queen in his reworked Swan Lake. By the 1950s, she earned more than any other dancer of her era.

An American prima ballerina

Tallchief represented a distinctly American approach to ballet, and the public was fascinated by her Native American heritage. As a stereotype-shattering Native woman with rare national recognition, she became what historian Rebekah Kowal calls “an unwitting protagonist in a cultural debate over Native American self-determination.”

Many reviews fixated on her ancestry; in a typical feature in the Kansas City Star in 1954, an interviewer remarked that she “varies from Indian trait,” pointed out that she had grown up in a house, not a teepee, and repeatedly called her an “Indian princess,” a reference to a 1953 honor conferred by the Osage Nation.

(For the Osage Nation, photography has harmed—and healed.)

By then, Tallchief was used to the attention—and the public’s interest in her identity. “She never seemed to let it bother her,” says Paschen.

“Above all, I wanted to be appreciated as a prima ballerina who happened to be Native American, never as someone who was an American Indian ballerina,” Tallchief wrote. Over the years, her Osage roots “acquired deeper meaning,” and she served as a role model to other dancers who bucked traditions of race and style on stage.

Legacy

After years at the top of the dance world, Tallchief retired in 1966. By then, she had divorced and remarried, and she moved into backstage roles. She co-founded the Chicago City Ballet with her sister Marjorie—also a professional ballerina—in the 1970s. And she tirelessly focused on passing her passion along.

“She was so committed to continuing ballet’s legacy,” says Paschen. “Transmitting that knowledge to the next generation was important to her.” In 1996, Tallchief received a Kennedy Center Honor and was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

Tallchief died in 2013. But her legacy still reverberates—and in 2023, she received an honor only shared by 19 other women when she was given a spot on a special series of American Women Quarters produced by the U.S. Mint. Tallchief’s quarter features her in the midst of a dramatic leap as The Firebird. It also includes the name her grandmother gave her: “Wa-Xthe-Thoṉba,” or “Two Standards”—reflecting her dual roles as a ballet dancer and Osage woman.

Paschen says her mother would be thrilled about the honor but would likely have also taken it in stride. “She wasn’t concerned about fame,” she says. “What she really cared about was the art in and of itself. She was magnificent.”

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : National Geographic – https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/maria-tallchief-first-american-prima-ballerina

Tags: DancerOsagescience
Previous Post

Tour the Maya underworld in these Belizean caves—if you dare

Next Post

How Siamese cats change their colors

World-Building With Daisies – 032C

Bringing Color to Life: The Art of Building Vibrant Worlds with Daisies

September 29, 2025
Milei Vowed to Fix Argentina’s Economy. Then Came a New Crisis. – The New York Times

Milei Vowed to Fix Argentina’s Economy. Then Came a New Crisis. – The New York Times

September 29, 2025
Good Deed Entertainment Acquires Worldwide Rights To Liza Mandelup’s Documentary ‘Caterpillar’ – Deadline

Good Deed Entertainment Lands Global Rights to Liza Mandelup’s Captivating Documentary ‘Caterpillar

September 29, 2025
Report finds increased nitrates as fertilizer application poses costs to public health and farmers – Wisconsin Examiner

Rising Nitrate Levels from Fertilizer Use Threaten Public Health and Farmers’ Livelihoods

September 29, 2025
Michigan church shooting suspect went on anti-LDS tirade, political candidate said – Detroit Free Press

Michigan church shooting suspect went on anti-LDS tirade, political candidate said – Detroit Free Press

September 29, 2025
WEEKEND SCENE: Wolves, salmon, stormwater, more at 2025 West Seattle Ecology Fair, report #1 – West Seattle Blog…

Discover Wolves, Salmon, Stormwater, and More at the 2025 West Seattle Ecology Fair!

September 29, 2025
The Real Threat to Faith Isn’t Science – The Gospel Coalition

The Real Threat to Faith Isn’t Science – The Gospel Coalition

September 29, 2025
Trump Distorts Facts on Autism, Tylenol and Vaccines, Scientists Say – hepmag.com

Scientists Disprove Claims Connecting Autism to Tylenol and Vaccines

September 29, 2025
Our Favorite Store-Bought Coleslaw Can Be Found At Many Grocery Stores – Yahoo

Our Favorite Store-Bought Coleslaw Can Be Found At Many Grocery Stores – Yahoo

September 29, 2025
Virginia Tech hosts annual New Music + Technology Festival this week – Cardinal News

Virginia Tech Kicks Off Exciting Annual New Music and Technology Festival This Week

September 29, 2025

Categories

Archives

September 2025
M T W T F S S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930  
« Aug    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (842)
  • Economy (864)
  • Entertainment (21,738)
  • General (17,314)
  • Health (9,907)
  • Lifestyle (876)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (865)
  • Politics (874)
  • Science (16,073)
  • Sports (21,363)
  • Technology (15,846)
  • World (846)

Recent News

World-Building With Daisies – 032C

Bringing Color to Life: The Art of Building Vibrant Worlds with Daisies

September 29, 2025
Milei Vowed to Fix Argentina’s Economy. Then Came a New Crisis. – The New York Times

Milei Vowed to Fix Argentina’s Economy. Then Came a New Crisis. – The New York Times

September 29, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version