Maria Tallchief

Dance style

Tallchief was known for "dazzling audiences with her speed, energy and fire."

According to Tallchief, "Passion and romance didn't play a big part in our married life. We saved our emotions for the classroom." Nonetheless, she described Balanchine as "a warm, affectionate, loving husband." The couple remained together, even through Paschen's brief imprisonment for tax evasion, until his death, in 2004. Upon Tallchief's death, Jacques d'Amboise remarked "When you thought of Russian ballet, it was Ulanova. With English ballet, it was Fonteyn. For American ballet, it was Tallchief. She was grand in the grandest way."

She is credited with "[breaking] down ethnic barriers" and was among the first Americans to flourish in a field long dominated by Russians and Europeans.

Tallchief is an inductee of the National Women's Hall of Fame, and was twice named "Woman of the Year" by the Washington Press Club. In 1999, Tallchief was awarded the American National Medal of Arts by the National Endowment of the Arts; in 2011, she received the Chicago History Museum's Making History Award for Distinction in the Performing Arts.

In 2006, the Metropolitan Museum of Art presented a special tribute to Maria Tallchief titled "A Tribute to Ballet Great Maria Tallchief," during which Tallchief officially named Kenneth von Heidecke as her protégé.

In 2018, Tallchief became one of the inductees in the first induction ceremony held by the National Native American Hall of Fame.

On November 13, 2020, a Google Doodle was made in honor of her.

Tallchief is presently being honored on an American Women quarter. The quarter, designed by Benjamin Sowards and sculpted by Joseph Menna, shows her on the reverse side opposite a depiction of George Washington sculpted by Laura Gardin Fraser.

Biographies and documentaries Tallchief has been the subject of multiple biographies. Her autobiography, Maria Tallchief: America's Prima Ballerina, was co-written with Larry Kaplan and released in 1997.

Sandy and Yasu Osawa of Upstream Productions in Seattle, Washington, made a documentary titled Maria Tallchief in November 2007 that aired on PBS between 2007 and 2010.