Maria Tallchief: America's Prima Ballerina.

Maria Tallchief had a grand career that earned her the right to an autobiography entitled Maria Tallchief: America's Prima Ballerina (Henry Holt, $27.50). She was married to George Balanchine, whom she credited with transforming her into a major artist; she was partnered by Erik Bruhn, Rudolf Nureyev, and Andre Eglevsky; and she was a principal with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, New York City Ballet, and Ballet Theatre. To clinch her claim to uniqueness. there was also the fact that she and her sister Marjorie must surely have been the only students of Mme. Nijinska to have Osage blood. (Their father was a chief in Oklahoma.)

As "written with Larry Kaplan," however, the book contains only sporadic glints of the spirited woman who said of NYCB's refusal to treat any dancer as a star, "I don't mind being listed alphabetically as long as I'm not treated alphabetically." Tallchief, who was present at history and made quite a bit of it, herself, is eminently qualified to drop the most resonant names in the business, but all too often she lets them fall with a thud: "Mr. Denham was a controlling personality and famous for being tight-fisted. Money, I heard, was a factor in Krassovska's refusal to dance." Nothing like factor to unleaven a sentence -- unless it's a dangling afterthought: "As the days and weeks passed, I mourned for my father. I was bereft. I missed him with all my heart, and was also grieving for my father-in-law."

Undercutting a crushing, unimprovable anecdote with a sly boast, capped by a cliche, should also be avoided: Tallchief had arrived for a reception just as that most useless of high society's relics, the Duchess of Windsor, was departing; ever gracious, the renowned divorcee paused long enough to assure Tallchief that she had so looked forward to hearing her sing. Kaplan really should have talked Tallchief out of adding: "Thank God, she didn't hear me sing. I may have perfect pitch but I can't carry a tune."

Her galaxy of associates are often glittering enough to outshine such lapses, and none more so than Balanchine. The book opens with a visit to his hospital room, just before his death; comes alive whenever he is on the page; and dwindles to its conclusion soon after he dies. She reveals few tabloid-style secrets about their marriage (he insisted on twin beds), but she does enlighten those balletomanes who may have been wondering about his working habits, personality, and crotchets (he thought The Red Shoes silly and found Massine's performance particularly annoying). Readers will learn quite a bit about her father's alcoholism and her present, often bumpy, marriage to a Chicago contractor but next to nothing about Chicago City Ballet, the company she directed after retiring. Her memories about her final seasons with NYCB can be as selective as they are bitter; no one who saw her entrance in John Taras's 1964 Piege de Lumiere as Queen of the Morphides, borne aloft by corps men and trailing a billowing, voluminous train, can agree that she was shunted aside after the company moved to Lincoln Center. (She never mentions that work.) If one expected more from the autobiography of America's prima ballerina, she has only herself to blame for having given us so much onstage.