Tanaquil Le Clercq

Le Clercq's life and career are profiled in the 2013 documentary film, Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq. Novelist Varley O'Connor created a fictional account of the relationship between Tanaquil LeClercq and George Balanchine in The Master's Muse (Scribner 2012).

Years later, after being stricken with polio, she reemerged as a dance teacher and as one student recalled, "used her hands and arms as legs and feet." She taught at Dance Theater of Harlem from 1974 to 1982.

Tanaquil Le Clercq was the fourth and last wife (1952–1969) of George Balanchine, the pioneer of American ballet. He obtained a quick divorce from her to woo Suzanne Farrell (who refused Balanchine's marriage proposal and went on to marry another Balanchine dancer, Paul Mejia).

Le Clercq was the daughter of Jacques Le Clercq, a European American intellectual, professor of French at Queens College in the 1950s-early 1970s, and his American wife, Edith (née Whittemore); she studied ballet with Mikhail Mordkin before auditioning for the School of American Ballet in 1941, where she won a scholarship.

Tanaquil Le Clercq (/lɛkˈlɛər/ lek-LAIR; October 2, 1929 – December 31, 2000) was an American ballet dancer, born in Paris, France, who became a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet at the age of nineteen. Her dancing career ended abruptly when she was stricken with polio in Copenhagen during the company's European tour in 1956. Eventually regaining most of the use of her arms and torso, she remained paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of her life.