Yvonne Chouteau

Myra Yvonne Chouteau (March 7, 1929 – January 24, 2016) was one of the "Five Moons" or Native prima ballerinas of Oklahoma. She was one of the five celebrated Indian ballerinas of Oklahoma and the youngest dancer in history to turn professional, In 1962, she and her husband, Miguel Terekhov, founded the first fully accredited university dance program in the United States, the School of Dance at the University of Oklahoma.

She died after a long illness on January 24, 2016.

family

Chouteau was born March 7, 1929, in Fort Worth, Texas. She was the only child of Col. Corbett Edward and Lucy Arnett Chouteau. Listed as Shawnee on the Cherokee role and a member of the oldest pioneering family in Oklahoma, she is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Maj. Jean Pierre Chouteau, who established Oklahoma's oldest white settlement, at the present site of Salina, circa 1796.

Yvonne Chouteau married Miguel Terekhov, a principal dancer with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, in 1956, and the couple had two children, Christina Maria and Antonia Elizabeth. Terekhov died in 2012.

legacy

Her illustrious list of honors began in 1947 with induction into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame (at age eighteen, its youngest member) and the International Who's Who. In 1963 Women in Journalism named her Outstanding Oklahoma Woman, and American Women in Radio and Television named her Woman of the Year. In 1964 the University of Oklahoma's Theta Sigma Phi named her Outstanding Faculty of 1964, and the Soroptimist Club of Oklahoma City named her Outstanding Woman of Oklahoma for 1970. With Oklahoma's other American Indian ballerinas, Chouteau is pictured in Mike Larsen's mural Flight of Spirit, on display in the Oklahoma Capitol Rotunda. At the end of the twentieth century she resided in Oklahoma City.

When the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian opened in Washington D.C. in 2004, Chouteau was honored with the inaugural National Cultural Treasures Award, celebrating her contribution to the nation's cultural heritage.[12]

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvonne_Chouteau
  • 2. "Oklahoma Historical Society". Digital.library.okstate.edu. Retrieved 2008-05-26.
  • 9. "OU dance school founder Yvonne Chouteau dies at 86 - OUDaily.com: News". OUDaily.com. Retrieved 2016-01-27.
• "Five Indian Ballerinas"
• "Yvonne Chouteau" biography from the Oklahoma Historical Society
• "Flight of Spirit" by Mike Larsen
• "Five Moons"
• "Ballet Shoes Take Dancer Yvonne Chouteau to the Top" by Anita McCain Published: December 11, 1983

  ---

• Residence: 1940 - 1625, Oklahoma, Oklahoma, Oklahoma, USA
• Race: White
  • Reference: 1940 United States Federal Census - SmartCopy: Jan 29 2016, 0:53:04 UTC