Maria Tallchief, ballerina - FT.com In the summer of 1950 the New York City Ballet made its first trip overseas. The company, little more than a year old, was the summation of long endeavours by Lincoln Kirstein and George Balanchine to create a troupe that would show classic dance as an authentically American art. Now it had become established at the New York City Center, the venture to Covent Garden was a vital recognition - though London might not have understood it - of the troupe's significance. As an obsessed young balletomane, I rushed to these performances. We already had knowledge of Balanchine's intensely musical dances but the chance to see his own troupe in his newest work was vastly important. I and certain (if not all) of the local critics were astounded by the vitality, the sophistication and unfailing musical elegance and power of what we saw. At the heart of certain of these performances was the figure of Maria Tallchief, a ballerina whose movement proposed an intense relationship with her music, a lustrous vitality that combined speed with exceptional clarity. I still recall how bright the dance seemed, with nothing clouded by mannerism or dubious "effects." We knew she had been married to Balanchine and was one of those ballerina-muses whose artistry could preoccupy and inspire his choreography. This London season was a success, despite maidenly misgivings from some critics who were of a view that certain ballets - notably Balanchine's revisionist stagings of The Firebird and Swan Lake , in which Tallchief blazed - lacked "atmosphere." Richard Buckle, best of critics, observed that Victoria station also had "atmosphere." With Tallchief's death in Chicago at the age of 88 passes a figure vital in the history of the New York City Ballet, of American ballet and of the artistic life of Chicago where she directed a ballet company. She was part of a fascinating moment in the annals of American dance: in the late 1930s no fewer than five women of American-Indian heritage were to have important careers in ballet - not least Tallchief and her younger and surviving sister Marjorie, whose career was made in Europe. Elizabeth Marie Tall Chief was born on January 24 1925 in Fairfax, Oklahoma, to Alexander Tall Chief and Ruth, his wife of Irish-Scottish descent, on an Osage reservation. That oil was found on this land was no mischance. When she was young her family moved to Beverly Hills, where she demonstrated a fine musical gift and was to start ballet classes, counting among her teachers the prodigious Bronislava Nijinska. A ballet career was inevitable and in 1942 she joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, a curious offshoot and echo of the Serge Diaghilev troupe. Her name was changed to Maria Tallchief (the bogus "Tallchieva" was rejected) and her beauty and budding artistry were soon recognised, not least by Balanchine, who arrived to make ballets for the troupe in 1944. Two years later they married, and Tallchief found herself as muse and wife to the master choreographer - she was, as she said, "in the presence of genius." By now Balanchine and Kirstein had formed Ballet Society in New York, for which the choreographer was producing fascinating work, with Tallchief an inspiring presence. In 1947 Balanchine accepted an invitation to direct the ballet at the Paris Opéra, a post made vacant when Serge Lifar was hounded by the politically vengeful comités d"épuration that sprung into being in post-occupation France. Tallchief accompanied him, danced (I was to see one performance in 1948 though was too overcome by the glories of the theatre to have any further memory) but the Opéra's internal politics defeated Balanchine. He returned to New York and the splendid emergence of his and Kirstein's City Ballet. In the succeeding years - despite an end to the marriage - Balanchine defined Tallchief's image. As his Firebird, his Swan Queen, as the prodigious and sensual Eurydice of his and Stravinsky's new Orpheus, in the bravura of Allegro Brillante and in the delicious Scotch Symphony, as in the general repertory, she was a central and inspiring figure. Her musical sensitivity, an unfailing clarity and a rhythmic sophistication marked her as a superb artist. She later ventured outside the New York City Ballet, appearing with the American Ballet Theatre among others, and retired in 1966. She had briefly remarried after separation from Balanchine, and in 1956 became the wife of the Chicago industrialist Henry Paschen, their marriage ending only with his death in 2004. Ballets are ideally portraits of their first casts. To learn of Maria Tallchief's artistry and importance, we need but see those ballets she created for Balanchine: they are her best and most enduring memorial.