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Sallie Wilson


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this, sent today, April 28, from the press representative for New York Theater Ballet, where Sallie Wilson worked on the Tudor repertory:

I regret having to tell you that Sallie Wilson passed away last night. Jack Anderson will be writing her obituary for the NY Times this week.

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The dance world has certainly lost some very ,important, influential people lately. Ms. Wilson was certainly an important contributor in so many ways- as a dancer, an artist, and as a repetiteur. I was very sad to hear this news.

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Such shocking news to wake up to this morning. I cherish my memories of her as a teen-ager taking classes at Ballet Arts in Carnegie Hall. We were excited for her because she was being auditioned for Ballet Theatre. Rest in peace, Sallie.

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From Anderson's obituary:

Ms. Wilson’s strong stage presence made her every role vivid, whether in classics or in modern ballets by Antony Tudor, George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins or Alvin Ailey. In 1979, Jennifer Dunning, writing in The New York Times, said that Ms. Wilson had “etched herself indelibly on the consciousness of the New York balletgoing public.â€
Absolutely! It's good that she lived to see (and participate in) a significant revival of interest in Tudor's works.

The interesting, rather strange relationship between Wilson and the choreographer is discussed in Donna Perlmutter's Shadowplay: The Life of Antony Tudor. I love Wilson's account of her debut in Pillar of Fire, as recounted to Perlmutter in an interview:

"Then came the performance, my debut, the revival of Pillar after a five-year absence. Nora [Kaye] was out front. Everybody had come. I went through it without remembering a thing. But suddenly it was over and I went walking in the basement. At least for a half hour. When I got to my dressing room there was Tudor -- and Hugh [Laing] -- waiting. The door had been locked and I opened it, we all went in. No one said a thing. They both sat down and Tudor picked up a newspaper, which he started to read. I was flustered and didn't want to ask him what he thought. So I tried a silly question. "Was my braid the right color?" "I have no complaints," he answered. "It was two years and many Pillars later that he came running backstage after a performance and kissed me. "'That was your first Pillar,' he said. "How strange he should pick this one," I thought I had been very distracted throughout. But that didn't stop me from spending the next twenty years trying to figure out what he saw."
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I was 12 in 1970 and my mother flew with me to NYC to deliver me to Madame Guillerm's. I was to attend the SAB summer program.

ABT had a summer season at NYST and my mother took me to the ballet each night that first week before she returned home to FL.

There was a Tudor evening in which Sallie Wilson danced Hagar.

Though I remember Ms. Wilson in "Pillar of Fire", my stronger memories are of her as a Flapper in a Ballet by Keith Lee.

I consider myself lucky to have seen her perform.

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fyi:

Times past : Chor: Keith Lee; mus: Cole Porter, orchestrated by William Bolcom (music originally written in 1923 for Jean Börlin's Within the quota); scen: after Gerald Murphy's original 1923 designs. First perf: New York, New York State Theater, July 1, 1970, American Ballet Theatre. //Revived: New York, YMHA, Nov 29, 1973; Keith Lee's Ballet of Contemporary Art; with additional music by Scott Joplin.

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From the NY Times

"Although usually quiet in manner offstage, Ms. Wilson made news in 1976 with a public display of anger directed at Clive Barnes, then the chief dance critic at The Times. He had written about Ballet Theater’s “Fall River Legend,” in which Marcia Haydée of the Stuttgart Ballet appeared as a guest artist. Ms. Wilson thought that Mr. Barnes had insufficiently recognized her own interpretative achievements in the work. Several newspaper at the time reported that Ms. Wilson threw a glass of Scotch at him."

I thought it was Makarova not Marcia Haydee! Have I been misremembering all of these years?

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New York Theatre Ballet sent out a message to its email list with a great picture of Wilson coaching from 2007 ("Photo of Sallie Wilson and Elena Zahlmann rehearsing Antony Tudor's Jardin aux Lilas in November 2007") and the following:

"New York Theatre Ballet mourns with a heavy heart the loss of Sallie Wilson. We will keep you informed of our future efforts as we pay tribute to our mentor, colleague, collaborator, and friend."

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From the NY Times

"Although usually quiet in manner offstage, Ms. Wilson made news in 1976 with a public display of anger directed at Clive Barnes, then the chief dance critic at The Times. He had written about Ballet Theater’s “Fall River Legend,” in which Marcia Haydée of the Stuttgart Ballet appeared as a guest artist. Ms. Wilson thought that Mr. Barnes had insufficiently recognized her own interpretative achievements in the work. Several newspaper at the time reported that Ms. Wilson threw a glass of Scotch at him."

I thought it was Makarova not Marcia Haydee! Have I been misremembering all of these years?

I remember it as Makarova also. Haydee's interpretation was very like Wilson's. Makarova's was not, but interesting nonetheless.

I also thought it was a glass of wine because I remember asking "white or red?"

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