The corporate media has so abandoned ballet–in addition to other non-profit art forms–that I can’t even find an obituary for Jonathan Watts, but apparently he died several years ago.
“I’m not in touch with anyone from New York City Ballet and haven’t been for years,” he told me in 2014, when I interviewed him by phone three times over the course of a week. But after Violette Verdy died in 2016, he emailed me: “With the passing of Violette Verdy comes the realization that I have lost the opportunity of staying in touch with others who have meant a great deal to me. ..Pat! Could you please let her know that I would like to give her a call and ask if that would be welcome. I don’t have her phone number or address.” Subsequently Wilde and he had a 90-minute phone reconciliation.
Watts was his own worst enemy, a colleague recalled. In 2017 I suggested to the Balanchine Foundation that they solicit his participation in their coaching archive. I wrote him asking if I could forward his contact info to them. “Certainly, it would be a great privilege to coach such marvelous dancers,” he emailed me, “but, at the same time, they should bear in mind the number of years that have elapsed since I last worked with Mr. B.” The Foundation did approach him, but the coaching session never happened.
I emailed him a snapshot of him chatting with Le Clercq and Balanchine at Idlewild airport in NYC before they left for their 1955 European tour. “I couldn’t be in better company,” he wrote when he thanked me. “Really it’s a thrill.”
When NYCB was in Paris in 1956, Balanchine worked with 22-year-old Watts on the Opera stage for his debut in the lead of Divertimento No. 15. He recalled rehearsing his closing-movement entrance with Adams and Le Clercq.”It was a big thrill ‘cause I’d never worked so closely with such dancers at that level. That remains a memorable moment, doing that entrance with those two women on that great stage.”