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Marjorie Talchif danced for president, spun the world and jumped to world fame, achieving such great success in the world of ballet that her native Oklahoma honored her with a bronze statue.
For 15 years, the statue depicting Talchif watched the western lawn of the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum – a body frozen in motion, en pointe with one leg raised in the waist, and arms outstretched across the chest and forehead.
Until last week, when thieves hacked it to pieces and sold it to a recycling center for about $ 250.
“We are devastated,” museum officials said on Facebook.
Detectives are investigating, and museum officials have begun online fundraising for $ 15,000, which they say is needed to cover the insurance deduction for the artwork and to increase security for several other outdoor sculptures on the property.
Tallchief’s was one of the statues of the Five Moons Museum, a bronze work depicting five of Oklahoma’s famous Indian ballerinas. The other four are Talchif’s sister, Maria; Yvonne Shuto; Rosella Hightower; and Mosselin Larkin.
“These women have had such an extraordinary impact on history,” Sharon Terry, then director of the Tulsa Historical Society, told Tulsa World when the statues were unveiled. “It has been said many times before, but it is still just as true – the world of ballet was extremely European until these five Indians appeared, all from small towns in Oklahoma. They really made room for Americans in the world of ballet.
Maria Talchif, a ballet star who inspired Balanchine, dies at 88
Local artists Monte Ingland and Gary Hanson have created the statues, the museum said. England worked on two of them before he died in 2005; Hanson completed the project in 2007.
Prior to the opening, Hanson told Tulsa World that sculpting the Five Moons gave him the opportunity to express his gratitude for the ballet. This is a way to look at a person’s condition. Here are five American Indians who are capable of doing amazing things – moving in ways most of us can only dream of – and who managed to succeed after they got their chance.
Talchif, born in 1926 and raised in Fairfax, Oklahoma, moved with her family to Los Angeles as a young girl so she and her sister could continue their ballet studies, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society. In 1957, she joined the Paris Opera Ballet, becoming the first American to achieve the highest rank of the dance company of the danseuse étoile, or “star dancer,” Oklahoman said last year. A year later, she performed at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, the first American to do so since the end of World War II.
During her career, Talchif danced for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. She also ran for French President Charles de Gaulle, according to the Historical Society.
In 1991, she was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.
From the archives: Maria Talchif’s journey from Fairfax, Oklahoma, to the heights of the ballet world
Talchif retired in 1993 after being a dance director with ballet troupes in Dallas, Chicago and Boca Raton, Florida. She died last November at her home in Delray Beach, Florida, at the age of 95. She was the last surviving member of the Five Moons.
“As Osage and a native of Fairfax, she has achieved a success unthinkable in the ballet world for some of her background,” Oklahoma Historical Society Executive Director Treight Thompson told Oklahoman last year.
While the museum is restoring part of the statue of Talchif, some parts are still missing, the Associated Press reported. The original mold for the statue burned in a fire, which complicates any effort to replace it.
But it is not impossible. On Monday, museum officials said they spoke with Hanson, the sculptor who created several of the original statues of the Five Moons. He said that even without the mold, he could recreate Tallchief’s.
In fact, he planned to do so, a feeling he summed up in an orderly message to the museum.
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