Elizabeth Or Betty Marie Tall Chief: Maria Tallchief

"If anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away"

These words were spoken many years ago by a woman who worked endlessly to achieve her goals. She had to give up many things but she never lost her passion. Her name was Maria Tallchief. The first Native American Prima Ballerina.
Elizabeth or Betty Marie Tall Chief was born on January 24, 1925 in Fairfax, Oklahoma, to Alexander and Ruth Porter Tall Chief. She lived on an Osage Indian Reservation with her parents and her older brother, Gerald and little sister Marjorie Tall Chief. Her great-grandfather Peter Bigheart had negotiated with the United States government in 1906 with the oil reserves that
provided the Osage tribe with money.
On the Oklahoma reservation where Maria’s tribe was set, they had found oil, during her father’s youth. Because of this the Osage tribe never lacked money, although times were not always easy. There was a point when the Osage tribe had become partially vulnerable to a few rapacious white citizens who tried to obtain their land through devious and vehement means. During the Osage Indian Massacres, Maria’s cousin, Pearl, barely absconded with her life when her entire family was killed.
Maria’s mother distinguished Maria’s musical talents from young age and had her start learning how to play the piano at age three. When Marjorie, Maria’s sister, was old enough, her mother began to in vision her girls becoming harmonious film stars. The girls learned from a magnificent background of dance, part vaudeville and part ballet, from a woman who lived in there town. Maria’s mother concluding that their home in the little town of Fairfax, Oklahoma did not provide enough opportunities for her talented girls and with the amount in oil checks diminishing; decided it was time for a change. Maria’s mother wanting the best for her children decided to move the family to California when Maria was only eight years old.
When Ruth and the girls were enjoying hamburgers and soda in a local drug store with Alexander filling up the car in the nearby gas station, they met someone who would become an amazing contact.
Ruth asked a substantial question to the pharmacist: Did he know of a respectable local dancing school? The pharmacist said that he did indeed, Beverly Vista ran by: Ernest Belcher. This was the first step in Maria’s outstanding career. With the family nearby the girls attended Vista and learned many dancing techniques such as: tap, acrobatics, and Spanish dancing. Maria also became master with the castanets.
While Maria and her sister were enrolled at Beverly Vista they felt their first taste of discrimination from of their heritage. As quoted by Maria Tallchief, "Some of the students made fun of my last name, pretending they didn't understand if it was Tall or Chief. 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.”
When she was twelve Maria’s mother found a revered ballet teacher for her daughters. Maria's thorough training from Mr. Belcher made her a suitable pupil for her new instructor Bronislava Nijinsky. The well respected Mrs.Nijinsky was also the sister to Vaslav Nijinsky and like her brother; she graduated from the Imperial Theatre School in St. Petersburg, Russia. Maria learned from Nijinsky just what it would take to become a dedicated ballerina.
When Maria first began her career in the early 1940’s she danced with Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.
From then on Maria studied and preformed with the best allowing her to receive the most miraculous opportunities. Through this she met the choreographer George Balanchine. The two got married in 1946 but got divorced only two years later in 1948. Although their marriage was short-lived, the two worked very well together as friends. When Maria joined the New York City Ballet in 1948, she danced to Balanchine's choreography in his version of The Nutcracker. She was the first person to dance as the Sugar Plum Fairy.
It was also around this time that Maria officially began to be known as Maria Tallchief by combining the two parts of her birth surname. In 1947 Maria Tallchief, the shy young Native American from a tiny town in Oklahoma, became the first prima ballerina, of the New York City Ballet. She continued to hold this tittle for the next thirteen years. Within that same year she went to become the first American to dance with the Paris Opera Ballet, and was also a guest performer with the American Ballet Theatre.
Maria had won many awards: In 1996, Maria became one out of five artists to receive the Kennedy Center Honors for their artistic contributions in the United States. That same year, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of
Fame.
In 1999, Maria was awarded the National Medal of Arts, the premier award given to artists and arts patrons by the U.S. government.
Maria Tallchief left this world on April 11, 2013, at the age of 88, while in a hospital in Chicago, Illinois. Her remaining relatives include her daughter, Elise Paschen, her sister and fellow ballerina, Marjorie Tallchief, and two grandchildren Stephen and Alexandra.
Throughout her entire life Maria worked hard to further her career. With headstrong determination and a will of iron she persevered and made an amazing life for herself when the rest of the world continued to doubt her. Maria Tallchief was an Oklahoma hero of the truest kind.