Maria Tallchief: The Osage Ballerina Who Conquered the World
By Margaret Ellsworth Kane
Length5h 14m
About this audiobook
Pawhuska, 1925. On a hill above the Osage Agency, two small girls in flour-sack dresses dance to a phonograph in the front room while their mother, who was forbidden dance lessons as a girl in Kansas, watches from the doorway. Down the hill the derricks nod, oil money arrives in quarterly headright payments, and the men who covet that money have begun to kill for it.
The older girl was Maria Tallchief. She would become America's first prima ballerina, the dancer for whom George Balanchine created his Firebird in 1949, and one of the founding stars of New York City Ballet. This biography follows her from the headright years and the piano lessons through the wartime Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Ballet Society and the birth of City Ballet, and on to the long American tours, with her sister Marjorie, a ballerina in her own right, never far from the story.
A portrait of a great artist that never loses sight of the family and the nation behind her, and of what it meant to dance for the Osage people on the grandest stages of the century.
Audiobook details
GenreBiography and Memoir
Length5 hrs 14 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateSep 19, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Chapter 1: Pawhuska, 1925
2Chapter 2: The Headright and the Piano
3Chapter 3: The Russian in the Living Room
4Chapter 4: Monte Carlo and the Ballet Russe
5Chapter 5: The Firebird
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6Chapter 6: Ballet Society to City Ballet
7Chapter 7: The Osage Ballerina
8Chapter 8: The American Tour
9Chapter 9: Prima Ballerina Assoluta
10Chapter 10: The Legacy of Osage County
11Chapter 11: The Firebird's Shadow
12Chapter 12: Dancing for the People
13About the Author
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