Career
Inspired to dance at age four after seeing the great ballerina Alexandra Danilova dance in Oklahoma City, Chouteau studied at the School of American Ballet in New York before Danilova recommended her in 1943 to Serge Denham for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. At 14, she was the youngest dancer ever accepted. Her first solo role was as Prayer in Coppelia. (1945). At age 18, she was the youngest member inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.
In 1956, Chouteau married dancer Miguel Terekhov. Together they organized the Oklahoma City Civic Ballet (now Oklahoma City Ballet). In 1962 they established the first fully accredited dance department in the United States at the University of Oklahoma at Norman, Oklahoma. She was featured in Ballets Russes, a documentary film by Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005.
Read more about this topic: Yvonne Chouteau
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