George Balanchine by Robert Gottlieb

Author:Robert Gottlieb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

His Women and His Men

With the anguish of his failed marriage to Zorina behind him and the promise of stability at the City Center, Balanchine was in a position to consolidate both his inner and outer lives. The relationship with Tallchief was gratifying professionally and easy emotionally. From the account in her autobiography, it’s clear that although they were happy together, this was no grand passion (for either of them). “Work took precedence over everything…. Passion and romance didn’t play a big role in our married life. We saved our emotion for the classroom.” Dryly she informs us that “he made sure we slept in twin beds, perhaps to conserve his energy.” He was always calm, affectionate, reasonable; interested in her clothes, her perfume (he chose L’Heure Bleue for her—she still uses it). He sent her charming little notes, most of them beginning, “Hi Darling!” And, she tells us, their relationship fulfilled her—until it didn’t. (He once told the dancer Robert Weiss, “You know I loved Maria, great dancer, great woman, was like tiger. Being married to tiger very exciting, but after awhile, being married to tiger takes too much energy.”)

Professionally their relationship could hardly have been more fulfilling. New York City Ballet was in reality Ballet Society under a new name, and the core of the company remained the same. Tallchief dominated Orpheus and triumphed in the difficult first movement of Symphony in C when Balanchine restaged it in America. It perfectly suited her strong and assertive technique, her absolute command of the stage, and no one has ever improved on her performance in this role. (She was in Paris with Balanchine when he staged Le Palais de cristal at the Opéra, and he must have had her in mind as he created this part.) She had remade herself as a Balanchine dancer, and despite the presence of other talented women in the company, she remained, for half a dozen years, the Balanchine dancer.

Certainly she was perceived as the company’s star—an impression confirmed in November 1949, when she was the key to its first bona fide hit, Balanchine’s reworking of the Stravinsky-Fokine Firebird, with which Diaghilev had electrified Paris in 1910. Over dinner at the Russian Tea Room one night, the impresario Sol Hurok suggested that Balanchine restore Firebird “for your wife.” Hurok was also ready and willing to sell to the New York City Ballet—for $4,250—the enchanting 1945 Chagall sets that he happened to be holding in storage. Balanchine speeded up the action, created new material, and, most important, unleashed Tallchief in an electric star performance that secured the company’s future and certified City Ballet as a major force in the dance world.

Francisco Moncion, who danced the Prince, was to say, “The ballet was made for Maria, and she went after it like a demon, with ferocity, as if possessed.” She herself recalled the crucial moment on opening night on which the ballet’s success seemed to hang:

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