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Maria Tallchief, RIP


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It's actually Joan Acocella's take, not Croce's (and since New Yorker profiles are a well-known genre unto themselves, I guess it should be noted it's not a profile, but an obit). Sorry, Neryssa. :)

Not to take this topic off topic, but I also noted Acocella's side remark on Farrell, and I think it is true only in part, or at least not without a lot of qualification. It's quite true that Farrell's peak years were a boom time in dance criticism as well as dance, and she benefited by her position as the last and longest lasting of the muses, but there were observers like Robert Garis who saw decades of Balanchine dancers and still revered Farrell, and Farrell's influence extends beyond that as well. As I noted upthread, Tallchief has a strong argument for being the Greatest Muse of All, and that particular debate can't ever be settled, but Farrell has more going for her than good timing. (Acocella knows all this as well as anyone, of course, and she does add her own qualification with "partly.")

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I especially loved [the] verbal snapshot of Tallchief -- intense, devoted to every detail of presentation -- coaching a very young Jennie Somogyi in "Pas de Dix" back in 1995.

Everybody know there's a video snapshot of her coaching

on YouTube at the moment? (Thanks for posting the Acocella obit. Although I found Bruhn's emergence as a kind of male femme fatale entertaining, I found the personal stuff a bit much also.)
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I had the impression that Nureyev was the fatal one, myself....

The stuff about Tallchief's love life is not new. (I'd question whether the Balanchine-Tallchief union was entirely sexless, though.) But then I'm always curious about how successful women negotiate the shoals of male-female relations.

Allegra Kent reports an exchange with Tallchief in her book which might sum up the matter. Kent is coping with Bert issues and Tallchief tells her, "Husbands come and go. Your dancing is what's important." (From memory.)

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Is it too late to add a UK radio obituary for Ms Tallchief? The BBC's Radio Four has recently launched an excellent on-air obituary programme called 'Last Words' and last Friday's included a piece on Maria Tallchief, with contributions from her daughter and from the FT's veteran dance writer Clement Crisp (who has nothing new to add to what is already known about her but whose words are nevertheless intersting). The piece is second to last in the half-hour programme - there's probably a way to skip to it but I'm not one of nature's tekkies, so I can't advise...

lastword_20130426-1226b.mp3

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It's actually Joan Acocella's take, not Croce's (and since New Yorker profiles are a well-known genre unto themselves, I guess it should be noted it's not a profile, but an obit). Sorry, Neryssa. smile.png

Opps! My apologies.

Allegra Kent reports an exchange with Tallchief in her book which might sum up the matter. Kent is coping with Bert issues and Tallchief tells her, "Husbands come and go. Your dancing is what's important." (From memory.)

I like that quote too, dirac - and that's exactly how I remember it. However, the Greatest Muse debate (in my faulty and biased opinion) should be shelved because Balanchine was not the same man or choreographer in 1947 that he was in 1952/1957/1964/1972, etc. I like re-reading I Remember Balanchine because everybody had a different opinion. And had Diana Adams and Allegra Kent been nuptially available to Balanchine, who knows? In fact, if Balanchine had not endured Le Clercq's tragic illness (had she not contracted polio), I don't think the obsession with Farrell would have been so intense. I know it's more complicated than that but there were so many variables involved: his age, the new theater, etc. The media and people tend to focus on Farrell so I'm glad for the books that have been published recently by Barbara Bocher and Jacques D'Amboise which remind us just how obsessed Balanchine was with Le Clercq and Adams. Please forgive my rambling.

N.

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Has anyone ever read "Tallchief in Orpheus" by Tallchief's daughter, the poet Elise Paschen?

Tallchief in Orpheus (1998)

You were all of twenty-three, married

to Balanchine. The nights he spent,

absorbed, at work on “Orpheus”

you felt alone, and stayed at home,

stitching an Indian patterned skirt.

But when you danced Eurydice’s

last pas de deux, you wrapped your arms

and legs around your poet husband,

“Orpheus,” willing him to look

into your eyes. As Balanchine

wrote, “tormented because she cannot

be seen by the man she loves.”

Attempting to seduce, you dance

the dance till finally he tears

away his mask, and you collapse

to earth and die. During rehearsal

Stravinsky asked, “How long to die?”

In the score he scratched five long counts.

The time of the ballet, “the time

of sand and snakes,” “of Greek earth legends”

wrote Balanchine. And Kirsten saw

(describing their Gluck’s “Orpheus”)

“the eternal domestic tragedy

between an artist and his wife.”

Your husband, armed with song, lays siege,

enchants the gods to claim you back,

vowing he will not look. But you

persuade him. Therefore Orpheus

throws off his mask, and loses you.

His mask becomes a lyre.

Mother, when I was young, I watched

you from the wings and saw the sweat

dripping from arms and neck, your gasp

for breath. I thought it was your last.

But no. You’d towel off, and then

step into the spotlight, smiling.

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Also, on a much smaller level, I wonder how future biographers will track Tallchief's years in Chicago, as an artistic director. I notice in her most recent autobiography, she doesn't spend much time discussing the work she did there, both at the Lyric Opera and Chicago City Ballet (which she co-directed with Paul Mejia). Those of us who danced for her have got to start writing things down, I guess!

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Those of us who danced for her have got to start writing things down, I guess!

Yes!

And, if I may extend that, we all need to be writing things down. What we saw and what we thought about it. Some of you know that I'm a dance critic, but my colleagues and I are only covering a certain amount of the field. (and as we struggle through this transition from older , print-based work to the newer electronic paradigms, we can write about even less). When I've worked in dance history, the personal narratives (diaries, letters, miscellaneous comments) have in many cases been just as revelatory as the formal published criticism.

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Jennifer Homans has written an end-of-year memorium to Maria Tallchief for the NY Times:

Maria Tallchief - The Osage dancer who took Paris by storm.

http://www.nytimes.com/news/the-lives-they-lived/20132/21/mariatallchief/

The French were won over: “The daughter of an Indian Chief dances at the Opera!” one banner headline read. Audiences accustomed to a more refined French style saw something open and free in her dancing. Balanchine and Tallchief did not stay in Paris, and Lifar, still embattled, soon returned to his post. Yet the import of the moment was clear: Paris may have been liberated by French and American forces, but the Paris Opera was liberated by George Balanchine and Maria Tallchief.
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I posted this in the Ballet History subforum today, but I guess it’s more appropriate here. 

Good day, Everyone,

Please see today’s Google Doodle honoring Maria Tallchief in celebration of Native American Heritage Month, and enjoy this wonderful video about the Doodle. 
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjlkcGgloLtAhVEnFkKHZ0WCeIQwqsBMAR6BAgCEAM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fm.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DkHEjSnVLGXE&usg=AOvVaw0AL1VAXU1Xkf0adTG_BJP6

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