Tamara Geva: first a muse & then a wife.

Now in her nineties, Tamara Geva has always offered the image of total glamour. In recent years at New York City soirees, concerts, and ballet or theater openings, she has often been seen in the company of elegant men or women. Invariably, they do not match her allure, for Geva is a star, a presence to reckon with. And to this day she is a woman of many memories. Back in the thirties, Geva was a toast of the Ziegfeld Follies, a soignee diva of Broadway musicals, and a high-voltage leading actress of the New York and London stages. It was a glittering career that spanned some four decades. But before all this happened, Geva was a young ballet student at the Maryinsky Theatre in her native St. Petersburg. Even then the thirteen-year-old Tamara, with her long blond hair and large, wistful eyes, knew how to turn heads. George Balanchine, a fellow ballet student at the Maryinsky Theatre, fell passionately in love with her. Here, in Geva's words, is their romantic story.

I met George Balanchine when I was thirteen years old. I was attending St. Petersburg's Maryinsky Theatre School in what they called evening courses. As children we were segregated; the boys were on one side of the school, the girls on the other. We hardly ever met. The exception was during ballroom dancing class. The boys were brought in, and that's when I saw George for the first time. But at that time he wasn't one of the pupils. He was already showing his wonderful vision and terrific imagination as a teacher and budding choreographer. So at this ballroom class he walked in with our director, Grigori Grigorovitch, and he came to watch. But in five minutes he took over the class. He started telling us what to do, showing us the minuet and the quadrille, and our poor teacher just stood there! I said to myself, This Balanchine is like a general and a poet.

There were many traditionalists at the school, a faction that was very strong. Some of them thought that what George was doing was not according to the classical tradition, and they were suspicious of him. The rumor began that the young dancers shouldn't be allowed to work with him, that if they did they might find it difficult to remain in the theater. Well, one day George came to me and asked, "Would you like to work with me?" Immediately I said, "Of course." And that's how it all began between us.

He started to choreograph things for us both. The first thing we did was La Nuit to Anton Rubinstein's Romance in E-flat. [It was later called Romance.] I remember that at the end of the dance he made a very revolutionary movement: George knelt. I stood on toe in arabesque. I held myself in balance by pressing my mouth to his. Well, people thought that was just the most erotic thing they ever saw!

Once Balanchine and I started dancing together, I asked him to come to our house. He and my father got along just magnificently. Father loved music, and he often asked George to play the piano. Father was a Wagnerite, and he asked George to play Wagner for him. Just to please him, George played anything my father asked for: half of Lohengrin, the whole of Tristan und Isolde. Of course, George really came to see me, but he also wanted to please father. One day he came again to the house and father said to him, "I have just bought a piano score of Parsifal. Please play it through for me, George. And then you can see Tamara." As we all know, Parsifal takes at least six hours to perform! But George did what my father asked.

After the Revolution things were really terrible. Finally, George moved in with us. There was no money and very little food. People were desperate. The only way we could sustain and support ourselves was to make so-called illegitimate appearances in little theaters. George would always choreograph something new for us. I would also sing, and George would accompany me on the piano. I had a very good voice in those days. So on one day I was a dancer and on the next day a singer or diseuse. We didn't actually get paid so much in money as in produce (flour, rice, honey), and we made a living.

About our marriage: Our wedding ceremony was really a comedy. To begin with, although I was only fifteen years old, I wanted to look like a real bride. I wanted to wear white with veils and trains and everything. But you couldn't get the material. Finally, we found a couple of yards of something that resembled silk, and the fabric was not white, but very pale blue. Still, it looked all right and the wedding dress was quite effective, even though there wasn't enough material to make long sleeves.

At the wedding we had a priest whom we had known as children, and he performed the ceremony. Now, mind you, at the time food was so scarce that everyone was constantly hungry. But Mother, with her usual determination, found enough food to make a good supper, just enough for a very small group of people.

George and I lived with my parents for a time, then we moved to our own place, but we lived there for only a very short time before departing from Russia. We were so young. In our teens! Very soon we met a man by the name of Vladimir Dimitriev. He was brilliant! He was someone who made his living here and there. When we met him he was a croupier at a casino that had just opened in St. Petersburg. As you know, it is the custom in casinos to give the croupier a part of your winnings, and the stakes at his particular table were very high. In the end, Dimitriev acquired quite a bit of money, which in Russia was very, very rare.

Dimitriev was so enterprising! He devised a plan that he presented to certain officials of the government. He said to them. "It's enough, this keeping of our talent away from the rest of the world. Let's show our young talent to every part of the world. Let me take some young people t% Europe. I'll invest my own money. I'll begin by taking a group of talented youngsters on a two-month tour of Germany, and after that we'll return to Russia." Well, the officials fell for it. We were on our way.

Dimitriev chose some dancers and also a couple of singers. The dancers were George, Nicholas Efimoff, Alexandra Danilova, myself, and Lydia Ivanova, who never made it, because she mysteriously drowned just days before our departure. So we sailed for Germany and landed in Stettin, in Poland. It was amazing! All of a sudden we found ourselves in a place where everything was available and open. You could buy anything. And we started eating. You should have seen how we ate. We all just started blowing up. And George drank a lot of schnapps.

We performed here and there, even in an insane asylum. Danilova and Efimoff did some classical things, but everything else was very modem, very new things created by Balanchine. But we were so poor! We received very little payment. I remember having to sell my hair in Germany. I had long, long hair. It was practically down to my knees. One day I went to a hairdressing salon and asked if I could sell them my hair. They said yes. It was a terrifying moment. My hair was cut and picked up in little bunches and tied together with string. I walked out with short, bobbed hair!

Anyway, after our tour of Germany we did not return to Russia, as Dimitriev had promised, but continued to live in Europe. From Germany we went to London. In London we played the Empire Theatre, and it was there that Anton Dolin, the British dancer, saw us perform. And it was Dolin who brought us to the attention of Serge Diaghilev. And that's how we got to Paris.

In Paris we lived in a sort of little boardinghouse on the Place de la Republique. I remember one day we were sitting around the table eating something and thinking about what would happen to us all, when the telephone rang downstairs in the hallway. The landlady came up and said someone wanted to talk to Monsieur Balanchine, and George left to take the call. When he came back he announced that Diaghilev was sending us money to go to Monte Carlo.

So then began the Diaghilev period. For George it lasted five years, from 1924 to 1929. For me, much less. Of course, throughout all this time George and I were still husband and wife. I will tell you that George as a husband was a very strange man. He was changeable. He was like a chameleon. One day you thought you were getting something from him, but the next day it would be different. I tried to dissect George's mind in order to know him better. But it was very hard to do.

You see, he was extremely religious -- always. He never doubted for a moment that his destiny was set and that he needn't ever worry about a thing. Whenever we were in trouble, I'd say, "George, what will we do now?" He said, "We wait. We wait." He was always calm. Very calm. In my entire lifetime I never heard him raise his voice. When he did get angry, his face would get a little flushed, but his voice would always be on the same level.

For me, the Diaghilev period was not entirely pleasant. You see, everybody in our group came with credentials, but I had none. I had only just gotten out of ballet school. Besides, there was a sort of seniority thing at the Ballets Russes. People had to leave or die or something before you could be taken on. It wasn't as though you were tried out or given a chance. Not at all! I did two or three things, because George started working for Diaghilev immediately. He first did The Song of the Nightingale with little Alicia Markova. Then he did Barabau, in which we all took part. I also did something in Nijinska's Le Train Bleu with Dolin. And I did George's The Triumph of Neptune, which was for Danilova. Well, I just never did anything terrific at the Ballets Russes, and I was raring to go and do something! I mean, Diaghilev once told me, "If Sokolova dies or leaves the company I will let you have all her parts." Well, who wanted to wait that long? It just wasn't in me to wait around; it just wasn't in my character.

In 1927 I hooked up with a touring company called Le Chauve-Souris that had played in America. They did revues -- miniature musical things -- and they asked if I'd like to join them on a new tour of America. I agreed, with the proviso that I perform three numbers of my own, like a small recital. George created these three numbers for me, and I was the first to bring his work to America. Up to that time nobody knew who George Balanchine was. These three pieces were the first of his works to be seen by American audiences.

The first was called Romanesque, a very classical piece danced in a white wig and with props. The props were two large white Borzoi dogs. I danced with them and around them. It was something very new. The second piece was Grotesque Espagnol to music of Albeniz, in which I was the matador, the bull, and the crowd all in one! It was a sensational number, believe me. The third number was something even more revolutionary. It was called Sarcasms, to music of Prokofiev. Now, who ever heard of anyone dancing to Prokofiev? I mean, Albeniz was understandable, but Prokofiev? My costume was half Harlequin and half pilot. Well, it stopped the show. So all this became the first whiff of Balanchine's choreography for American audiences.

I danced with the Chauve-Souris for two months. They wanted me to return with them to Paris, but I wanted to stay in America. Eventually I landed in the Ziegfeld Follies, and later went on to make my name on Broadway. In the meantime, my marriage to George sort of stopped.

When George came to America in 1933, 1 was the first person he came to see. I must say, politically, George was one of that almost extinct species, a monarchist. He was a total monarchist. He loved pomp and circumstance, kings and queens, and everything royal. But he took to America right away. He liked it very much. It was Lincoln Kirstein who had brought George to the States, and there was never any doubt as to what George wanted to do. First, he wanted to open a ballet school, which he did, and then he wanted to form his own ballet company, which he also did and which he called the American Ballet.

I remember that the company opened in a large theater in New York City on West 54th Street in 1935, and George asked me to dance in the first performance. It was in a 1933 ballet called Errante, set to the music of Schubert. It had wonderful sets and costumes by Pavel Tchelitchew. The set had the effect of someone sitting inside a lit silk lampshade. My costume was short in front, but it had a train that was ten feet long! I had to dance over the train and maneuver it.

Then, in 1936, George created the dances for On Your Toes, the Broadway musical by Rodgers and Hart. At the time, I was in Hollywood making my first movie. I received a call about doing On Your Toes with George. It all happened very easily, very simply. I just signed, and came East to start work. Dick Rodgers, our composer, was a theatrical genius. He knew exactly what he wanted, not just in terms of singing, but in matters of the kind of personalities he wanted to see on the stage. So he created this work especially for Ray Bolger and me. It was the most unlikely combination imaginable. But it worked!

As for the dances, they were some of George's wittiest creations. The first act ended with La Princesse Zenobia Ballet, a strictly tongue-in-cheek pas de deux but quite difficult to execute. It started out being extremely classical, but suddenly turned totally satiric and became completely hysterical. Of course, the balcony caught on immediately. The people in the orchestra thought it was a classical masterpiece. They didn't get it at all. Then, in the second act came Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, and it was remarkable. It fell together so easily. And George was amazing.

It's very difficult to tell you how George works -- how he does things. It just happens. It comes out of him naturally. He doesn't sit there and think. He doesn't go around with a book. the way Massine went around with a book. If George didn't like something, he changed it. It was such an easy process. If you have a talent of that magnitude, you don't have to sweat. Well, George never had to sweat.

George and I remained friendly throughout the years. The only time he really got mad at me and didn't speak to me for two years was after I had written my book, Split Seconds [1972]. He was furious. And he had good reason. You see, he didn't want to be depicted as just a man, a human being like everybody else. He wanted to be known only through his creations. He wanted to be known as someone who had dreams, someone who would be remembered only through his works and through his teaching. George had many wives, and we all left him. He would say, "That's all right. It leaves room for the next one." You see, like most people possessed of great talent, he was very selfish. Such people are very self-centered. And he was flirtatious. He looked around all the time. But he was a very kind guy. Sometimes he was angry and, oh, he had the memory of an elephant! Still, he brought out the very best in each one of his wives.

At the end, in 1983, when he got so sick, I went to see him at the hospital all the time. One day I entered his room, and he was lying there holding a little icon in his hands. I said, "What have you got there, George?" He answered, "Must believe ... must believe." He was beginning to forget things. But on another day, Kramarevsky, one of his colleagues at the school, was there with me. To amuse George, he started to recite a Russian poem. Kramarevsky came to a certain part of the poem and then stopped. George suddenly opened his mouth and finished the poem verbatim. It was an extraordinary moment.

I think I was the last person to see George before he died. Actually, it was myself and Barbara Horgan, his longtime assistant. Often, I would bring some food I had cooked and feed him like a baby. It was terrible to see him die. Very near the end he seemed to revert to our childhood. I would be sitting next to him, and he'd look at me with a very strange, faraway look. And he'd start speaking in Russian and say, "Soon, we will be going away." I answered, going along with him, "Yes, George, we will be going away." He said, "Don't tell the others." He seemed to be floating between the present and the past. And I thought to myself, I'm the one who started the circle, and I'm the one who is closing it. It took me a very long time to get over George's death.