Tamara Geva

Tamara Geva, born Tamara Levkievna Zheverzheeva on March 17, 1906, in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire, was a Soviet-born American actress, ballet dancer, and choreographer whose Broadway career spanned from 1927 to 1953. She died on December 9, 1997.

Geva was the daughter of Levkiy Gevergeyev, a collector and art patron who sponsored Russian avant-garde artists, and Tamara Urtahl, an actress. The family home on Rubinstein Street contained an extensive collection of art, books, and theater artifacts assembled by her father, along with a miniature theater. After his death, his theater memorabilia collection was placed in an exhibit at the Saint Petersburg State Museum of Theater and Music. Geva's childhood was shaped by the upheaval of the Bolshevik Revolution, during which her father's fortune was seized and the family at times struggled to find food.

Her introduction to ballet came when her father took her to the Mariinsky Theatre to see La Esmeralda performed by Mathilde Kschessinska. Although her parents initially forbade formal ballet training, she was permitted to take private lessons. At age 13 she began attending evening dance classes at the Mariinsky Theatre School, where her teachers included Evgenia Sokolova and Alexander and Ivan Chekrygin. It was there that she met George Balanchine, who was teaching ballroom dance classes. The two began performing together professionally, and among their earliest collaborative works was La Nuit, set to Anton Rubinstein's Romance. From 1921, Balanchine led his own company, The Young Ballet, and Geva performed with the troupe. The two married in 1924, when Geva was 17 years old.

A European tour with The Young Ballet proved difficult. Performances in Berlin were poorly received, and the company was reduced to dancing in small venues across the Rhine Province, including Wiesbaden, Bad Ems, and Moselle. Engagements in London were similarly unsuccessful. In 1924, the couple encountered Anton Dolin, a principal dancer with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, who facilitated an audition with Sergei Diaghilev. Diaghilev hired the dancers of The Young Ballet, and Geva joined the Ballets Russes. With that company she performed in The Triumph of Neptune in 1926, wearing a costume made of tiny mirrors that weighed 75 pounds. By 1926 her marriage to Balanchine had deteriorated, and she left both him and the Ballets Russes to join Nikita Balieff's La Chauve-Souris. Despite the separation, Geva and Balanchine maintained a friendship and later collaborated professionally.

In 1927, while touring with Chauve-Souris, Geva arrived in the United States. At the Cosmopolitan Theatre in New York City she premiered three solo pieces that Balanchine had choreographed for her: Romanesque, Grotesque Espagnol with music by Albeniz, and Sarcasms with music by Prokofiev. She subsequently performed with the Ziegfeld Follies before transitioning to Broadway. Her Broadway credits included the musical Whoopee!, the revue Flying Colors in 1932, and the revue Three's a Crowd in 1930, for which she choreographed the number "Talkative Toes." For Flying Colors she choreographed "Two Faced Woman." In 1935 she performed with Balanchine's American Ballet in New York, dancing in Errante, set to music by Schubert, during the company's first performance.

Her most prominent Broadway role came in 1936 when she was paired with Ray Bolger in On Your Toes, the Rodgers and Hart musical. In that production she danced in the "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" sequence, choreographed by Balanchine with music by Richard Rodgers. New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson described her performance as "magnificent" and noted that "she can burlesque it with the authority of an artist on holiday." In 1938 she appeared in Robert Sherwood's Idiot's Delight in London. Her stage work extended to classical drama: she played Helen of Troy in a 1941 New York production of Euripides' The Trojan Women, and she appeared in the Los Angeles production of Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit in 1947. In 1953 she returned to Broadway to play Lina Szczepanowska, a sarcastic acrobat, in a revival of George Bernard Shaw's Misalliance, alongside Roddy McDowall and Richard Kiley. Her Broadway appearances also included the comedy Peepshow and Pride's Crossing, among other productions.

Beyond the stage, Geva served as lead choreographer for Ben Hecht's 1946 film Specter of the Rose, based on the Nijinsky legend. In 1959 she and Haila Stoddard created Come Play With Me, a musical comedy with a score by Dana Suesse, which had a short off-Broadway run. Her final screen appearance was in the film Frevel in 1983. In 1972 she published an autobiographical book titled Split Seconds.

In her personal life, Geva was the first of Balanchine's four wives. Following their 1926 separation, she married Kapa Davidoff, born Garabed Tavitian, in August 1931, though a religious ceremony had taken place two years earlier; that marriage ended in divorce in June 1936. Davidoff was an actor and fashion executive.