My reaction was pure terror, Tallchief recalled of that dinner in the 1940s in her memoir. So many had danced The Firebird before her.
Tallchief, a Native American ballerina of the Osage Nation, had redefined the role. Her centennial is this year she died in 2013, at 88.
When his Firebird premiered in 1949 at New York City Ballet, there was a collective gasp as Tallchief leaped into the arms of Francisco Moncion's Prince Ivan.
Her legacy rests on what she brought to the art form in the 1940s, '50s and '60s a series of revelations about what ballet could be.
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