New York
Tallchief left Los Angeles at the age of 17 and auditioned in New York City. She joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and quickly became a featured soloist. At the suggestion of Agnes de Mille, she adopted the name Maria Tallchief.
Russian-born choreographer George Balanchine wrote several of his most famous works for her. The two were married on August 16, 1946; the marriage ended in 1952. They had no children. She was the first prima ballerina of the New York City Ballet from 1947 to 1960, where Balanchine was the principal choreographer. Her performance of Balanchine's The Firebird in 1949 and their earlier collaboration at the Paris Opera elevated Maria Tallchief onto the world stage. She also originated the role of the Sugarplum Fairy in Balanchine's version of The Nutcracker, in 1954.
Tallchief continued to dance with the New York City Ballet and with other groups until her retirement in 1965. With her sister Marjorie, she founded the Chicago City Ballet in 1981 and served as its artistic director until 1987. From 1990 to present she has been artistic advisor to Von Heidecke’s Chicago Festival Ballet.
Read more about this topic: Maria Tallchief
Famous quotes containing the word york:
“The movies were my textbooks for everything else in the world. When it wasn’t, I altered it. If I saw a college, I would see only cheerleaders or blonds. If I saw New York City, I would want to go to the slums I’d seen in the movies, where the tough kids played. If I went to Chicago, I’d want to see the brawling factories and the gangsters.”
—Jill Robinson (b. 1936)
“New York ... is a city of geometric heights, a petrified desert of grids and lattices, an inferno of greenish abstraction under a flat sky, a real Metropolis from which man is absent by his very accumulation.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)