“Dance from your heart and love your music and the audience will love you in return.”-Maria Tallchief. Maria Tallchief did just that. She was born Elizabeth Marie Tall Chief, and nicknamed Betty Marie, but changed her name to Maria Tallchief later on in her dancing career. Tallchief had major influences on many things. After becoming a ballerina, Maria had many influences on her time and had helped shape the dance world today. Maria's family was a big part of her becoming a Ballerina. Her father and his side of the family were part of the Osage Tribe located in Fairfax, Oklahoma.The tribe was build on oil filled land, the money from the oil was divided and given to all the tribe members (TallChief and Kaplan 7; Aloff). With this money, …show more content…
Maria received many reviews that praised her dancing. John Martin, a dance critic, from The New York Times, wrote “ Miss Tallchief is the real discovery in the classic field. A recent addition to the Ballet Russe, Tallchief gave a stunning account of herself in Nijinska’s Chopin Concerto and in several other classic roles. She is well off the beaten track in ballerina types, but she is a ballerina surely as this is Sunday. She has an easy brilliance that smacks of authority rather than bravura, and when she has grown up, so to speak, she can hardly escape being somebody.” (Tallchief and Kaplan 33). Maria also influenced choreographers into making new danced, many of which were made to show off her talent (Gridley 47). According to Mindy Aloff Maria was one of Balanchine’s, a famous choreographer of the time, most important ballerina; her dancing of the Firebird brought fame to her and the company. With great powers comes great responsibility, same goes for Maria. With her talented dancing being broadcasted the expectations for a gorgeous performance were high and so was her stress (Gridley 49). The stress of being perfect took a toll on Maria, she would spend hours upon hours practicing for a role and would skip out on eating and as a result lost a lot of weight. With this weight loss it makes choreographers nervous that she wasn’t healthy, they once told her if she didn't get her weight back up she couldn’t dance (Tallchief and Kaplan 31). Marion E. Gridley stated that many dancers didn’t appreciate that an American dancer was landing a bunch of leading roles in the production. The dancer of the company saw Maria as a threat. Tallchief was afraid that one day she would put on her pointe shoes and ground up glass would end her career (Tallchief and Kaplan 34,35). Coincidently with that