Sallie Wilson, undated, unidentified publicity photo

[rg]

scan of photo of Sallie Wilson, submitted for newspaper usage, with glue residue stains on the back that bleed through to the front.

unknown role, perhaps HELEN OF TROY?

[Paul Parish]

beautiful!!

[sandik]

That certainly looks like the Helen of Troy costume. She looks wonderful here -- I haven't really read much about the early part of her career, but now I'm curious.

[Mme. Hermine]

Besides Fall River Legend, I did see her in Les Sylphides many years ago and thought she was very very good. In FRL, she was just extraordinary.

[bart]

I was just thinking about Wilson, in relation to the discussion of the Martha Graham/ George Balanchine Episodes on the MCB thread. This may have been the only time I remember seeing her, as Queen Elizabeth I in confrontation with Graham's Mary Queen of Scots. The crucial scene was a representation of a tennis game between the two queens.

Here is the 2008 NY Times obituary by Jack Anderson.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/arts/dance/29wilson.html?_r=0

The obituary concludes with the following:

Ms. Wilson always believed in total involvement in roles, even if the part was as an extra in a Wagner opera. At the Met, I once had to stand still for 45 minutes as Tannhäusers page, she once said.

As far as Im concerned, if youre on stage in a ballet, you're doing dancing, she said on another occasion. Any movement or non-movement on stage is dance.

This says something about how seriously Wilson took her on-stage time. (It should also be a comfort to those of us whose ballet experience has been limited entirely to supernumary roles. In Wilson's book, we too are "dancers." )