At eighty-seven, Patricia Wilde remains a grande dame of the ballet world. As a young star she toured America in the company of the Ballet Russe. In her heyday in the 1950s and '60s, she was a first-generation member and principal dancer of New York City Ballet during the uniquely dramatic Balanchine era--the golden age of the company and its hugely gifted, influential, exploitative, and dictatorial director. In Wilde Times, Joel Lobenthal brings...