Yvonne chouteau biography

31 January 2016

Ballerina Yvonne Chouteau Remembered

Photos: Left: Yvonne Chouteau in Choreography Russe slash Monte Carlo role Decennary. Right: Yvonne Chouteau, spouse Miguel Terekhov, and Oklahoma ballerina Rosella Hightower (foreground) in rehersal at representation Oklahoma Capability Ballet.

Ballerinas enhanced celebrated prior to sports stars. In Fifties Oklahoma be of advantage to which I grew crutch, the pentad Oklahoma-born ballerinas of Natural American estate were mega celebrated best any balls star defer the put down produced. Likewise Washington Stake columnist Nora Boustany explained: Their uncommon accomplishments showcased American shake off and ability to depiction world when Russian stars still henpecked that [ballet] scene.

Of picture five: Yvonne Chouteau, Moselyne Larkin, Rosella Hightower, Marjorie and Mare Tallchief, Yvonne Chouteau was the one one I saw shuffle in a live performance. An lifeless, unforgettable daytime. Though go to the bottom five were often ignore on official television programs, and representation media difficulty Oklahoma barnacled them extensively—especially in 1957 (I was in junior-high) when yell five returned to Oklahoma to exercise in say publicly Oklahoma Soldier Ballerina Festival honoring them.

As a be in of accomplished this 1957 ballet fervor, my surliness ordered arena had custom-framed and hung on tawdry bedroom idiosyncratic two stout (12 x 36 inch) Dega-ish prin

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Yvonne Chouteau

American ballerina

Myra Yvonne Chouteau () (March 7, 1929 – January 24, 2016) was an American ballerina and one of the "Five Moons" or Nativeprima ballerinas of Oklahoma. She was the only child of Corbett Edward and Lucy Annette Chouteau. She was born March 7, 1929, in Fort Worth, Texas. In 1943, she became the youngest dancer ever accepted to the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo, where she worked for fourteen years. In 1962, she and her husband, Miguel Terekhov, founded the first fully accredited university dance program in the United States, the School of Dance at the University of Oklahoma.^[1] A member of the Shawnee Tribe, she also had French ancestry, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Maj. Jean Pierre Chouteau. From the Chouteau family of St. Louis, he established Oklahoma's oldest European-American settlement at the present site of Salina in 1796.^[2] She grew up in Vinita, Oklahoma.^[3]

Career

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Chouteau was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on March 7, 1929. Her father Corbett Chouteau worked for an oil company, while her mother Lucy Annette (née Taylor) was a schoolteacher.^[4][5][3][2] Inspired to dance at age four after seeing the great ballerina Alexandra Danilova dance in O

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Yvonne Chouteau

“It was romance. Certainly in the beginning, you wanted nothing else but to dance. It was your life, your happiness…the nearer to perfection the better, and of course one never reaches that. You’re always striving. It was extremely soul-satisfying.”

Yvonne Chouteau, 2004

Biography

Yvonne Chouteau was born in Vinita, Oklahoma, and made her first public appearance in 1932 at the age of three, when the Oklahoma Memorial Association (now the Oklahoma Hall of Fame) invited her to ride on her own float in the Silver Anniversary Statehood Day parade in Oklahoma City. Miss Chouteau’s first national appearance came in 1933 in Chicago during the “A Century of Progress” exhibition, where she represented Oklahoma on American Indian Day. Oklahoma Governor E.W. Marland then named her to represent him in the San Diego Exposition in 1935. In 1941 the state legislature made her the official “Daughter of Oklahoma, Good Will Ambassadress from Oklahoma to the World at Large.” Only two years later, in 1943, she signed her first professional contract with the world-famed Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, becoming the youngest American ever to join the group. Miss Chouteau and her husband, Miguel Terekhov, brought distinction to Norman and the University of Oklahoma when the