31 Facts About Tamara Geva

Tamara Geva was a Soviet and later an American actress, ballet dancer, and choreographer.

Tamara Geva was the daughter of art patron and collector Levkiy Gevergeyev and she was the first wife of the well-known ballet dancer and choreographer George Balanchine.

Geva's mother Tamara Urtahl was an actress, while her father Levkiy Gevergeyev was a passionate collector and art enthusiast.

Tamara Geva sponsored Russian avant-garde artists and their projects through his enthusiasm for artistry.

Tamara Geva's parents were unable to marry until their daughter was six years old.

Tamara Geva's father had agents all over who found art, writings, and artifacts from a variety of well-known artists to add to his massive collection.

Tamara Geva has said that this collection was her father's most prized possession.

Tamara Geva grew up in the midst of the Bolshevik Revolution where she experienced true hardships in her youth.

Tamara Geva fell in love with ballet when she was taken by her father in Mariinsky Theatre and saw La Esmeralda danced by Mathilde Kschessinska.

However open-minded, her parents forbade Tamara Geva to go to ballet school.

At age 13 Tamara Geva began to attend evening dance classes at the St Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre School, when it began to accept older students shortly after the revolution.

Tamara Geva married Balanchine in 1924, when she was 17 years old.

Tamara Geva wrote later, that in that time they had to dance 'in small dark places, in summer theaters and private ballrooms, in beer gardens and before mental patients'.

Tamara Geva remembered Diaghilev as having a superior air at all times and that he would often look down upon others, but he could turn his charm on at any time he needed it.

Tamara Geva wanted to rise above ballet and try herself in cinema and theater.

In 1927, Tamara Geva left Europe and made her way to America while touring with Chauve-Souris.

Tamara Geva introduced Balanchine's choreography to New York City, where she danced three solos choreographed for her by him.

Tamara Geva premiered these three pieces entitled Romanesque, Grotesque Espagnol with music by Albeniz, and Sarcasms with music by Prokofiev at the Cosmopolitan Theatre and was called "a Russian star".

Tamara Geva cherished her time on Broadway as a performer, but she got the chance to choreograph many numbers in these productions.

Tamara Geva choreographed the "Talkative Toes" dance for Three's a Crowd and "Two Faced Woman" in Flying Colors.

In 1935 Tamara Geva performed with the American Ballet, Balanchine's ballet company in New York.

Tamara Geva performed in their first performance where she danced in Errante with music by Schubert.

Tamara Geva later immersed herself in film and theater work while staying in America.

Tamara Geva went on to act in productions of the works of Euripides, George Bernard Shaw, and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Tamara Geva acted in Euripides' The Trojan Women where she played Helen of Troy in New York in 1941, and in the Los Angeles production of Sartre's No Exit in 1947.

Tamara Geva was the lead choreographer for Ben Hecht's film Specter of the Rose, based on the Nijinsky legend.

In 1953 Tamara Geva played the character of Lina Szczepanowska a sarcastic acrobat in a New York revival of George Bernard Shaw's Misalliance.

Tamara Geva was the first of Balanchine's four wives, all of whom were dancers.

Later in the USA, Tamara Geva married Kapa Davidoff.

In 1942 Tamara Geva married again, this time to American actor John Emery, that union ended in divorce in 1963.

Tamara Geva passed away on 9 December 1997, at the age of 91, at her home in Manhattan from natural causes.