Wilson, Sallie

Sallie Wilson (April 18, 1932, Fort Worth, Texas – April 27, 2008) was a ballerina who appeared with New York City Ballet where she danced opposite Martha Graham in the premiere of Graham and George Balanchine's collaboration at NYCB, Episodes in May, 1959, and subsequently with American Ballet Theatre, where she was associated with several ballets created by Antony Tudor. In 1966, she achieved a triumph as Hagar in ABT's revival of Tudor's ballet Pillar of Fire, set to the music of Arnold Schoenberg's Transfigured Night. The ballet is loosely based on the poem that inspired the Schoenberg piece (although rather loosely) rather than the Biblical story of Hagar. Wilson made one television appearance, as Mrs. Stahlbaum, the mother of Clara (Gelsey Kirkland), in Mikhail Baryshnikov's television version of Tschaikovsky's The Nutcracker, and one film appearance, in the 1973 PBS documentary American Ballet Theatre: A Close-Up in Time. She also appeared on Merv Griffin's television special "Sidewalks of New England" in 1968, performing a dance from Agnes DeMille's "Fall River Legend". Wilson was a ballet mistress for New York Theatre Ballet when she died of cancer in Manhattan, on April 27, 2008.