An ex-New York City Ballet told me she loved Wilde Times. As always my reaction was sort of like, “Thank you — what did you really think?” Not that she didn’t have EVERY reason to like the book, but although compliments are fun, it’s always criticism that you learn from. Constructive criticism, that is. I am so more and more inclined to tell people to weigh every criticism any one gives and then feel free to accept it or not, and always to ask yourself, Where is this person coming from? Sometimes someone has a completely different take on how a project should be “prosecuted,” as it were. Or there can be a personal bias, etc. And let’s face it, if you want to do anything your way, someone’s going to object.
But what I really meant with this ex-dancer was, since you were there, what else do you want to say? Something she said that was interesting was that there was a period of time when Wilde was being coached by her mother-in-law, Mme. Nevelska, and a different quality appeared in Wilde on stage that this ex-colleague hadn’t seen before. Wilde had never told me about that, and now I thought, I should have asked her, “Were you ever coached or taught by your mother-in-law?” But I was glad to hear this factoid, better late than never.
Interesting, too, because it shows that New York City Ballet dancers did go outside the company for coaching even while he was alive. Jonathan Watts recalled that he once even brought Stanley Williams into the studio with Balanchine there to inspect something that Balanchine had made for him!