Tamara Geva

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Tamara Geva (1907 - 1997) was a Russian-born actress, ballet dancer and performer.

She was born Tamara Gevergeva on 17 March 1907 in St. Petersburg, Russia. She was the daughter of Levko Gevergeyev, a wealthy manufacturer of church vestments and a patron of avante-garde artists. As a child Tamara lived in a huge 18th century house which had a miniature theater and a theater museum. The latter is preserved and is currently known as The State Museum of Theater and Music. Her father was a freethinker and both her parents were raised as Muslims. The parents were not officially married until their daughter was 6.

As a child Geva studied ballet with a private teacher. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 she entered The Maryinsky Ballet School as a night student, when it began to admit children of non-Christian backgrounds. Here she met dancer and impresario George Balanchine, who was teaching ballroom dance classes. She began training as a dancer as an adolescent at the age of 14.

Geva shortened her surname when she came to the West. She married Balanchine in 1921 (not 1923 as has been misreported). She was 14 years old. The marriage would dissolve in 1926. She began appearing professionally by 1925 in a German production of A Midsummer Night's Dream as Oberon. In 1927 she introduced Balanchine's choreography to New York City, when she danced two brief solos by him. At the time she was touring with Nikita Balieff's Chauve-Souris, a touring revue which was composed of Russian emigres.

In 1937 Tamara paired with actor Ray Bolger, on Broadway, in the musical On Your Toes. The production was written by Rodgers and Hart. Miss Geva choreographed a dramatic Slaughter On Tenth Avenue sequence along with a balletic parody. A reviewer described her performance as magnificent, and that she can burlesque it with the authority of an artist on holiday.

Later the dancer acted in plays which demonstrated her great diversity as a performer. She was featured in productions of the works of Euripedes, George Bernard Shaw, and Jean Paul Sartre. On Broadway Geva appeared in the musicals Whoopee (1934), Three's A Crowd (1930), and Flying Colors (1932). In 1935 the Russian dancer performed with the American Ballet. This was Ballanchine's intitial company in New York. Afterwards Tamara immersed herself in films and the theater.

Together with Raymond Massey she starred in the London premiere of an anti-war play, Idiot's Delight (1938), written by Robert E. Sherwood. She acted in Euripedes' Trojan Women in New York, in 1941, and in the Los Angeles, California production of No Exit (1947), by Sartre. In 1953 Miss Geva played the character of a sarcastic acrobat in a New York revival of Shaw's Misalliance. In the cast was Roddy McDowall and Richard Kiley. Tamara and Haila Stoddard created Come Play With Me in 1959. This was a musical comedy with a score penned by Dana Suesse. It had a short run off Broadway.

She choreographed the dances for Specter of the Rose (1946). The latter was a film about a ballerina who is taken with an insane driver. It was written by Ben Hecht. Her last performance was on screen in Frevel (1984), credited simply as Tamara.

Her English-speaking career on celluloid consisted of the following: