Stephanie Selby, who was the high-profile subject of “A Very Young Dancer,” a book that inspired a generation of would-be ballerinas and future dance stars but who abruptly left the ballet world and disappeared from view, died Feb. 3 in Cody, Wyo. she was 56.
The cause was complications from an apparent attempt to end her life, said Howell Howard, a cousin.
When she was 10, Mrs. Selby the dream of many aspiring dancers, she took classes at the School of American Ballet in Manhattan, the prestigious ballet academy founded by George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein and the training ground for Balanchine’s New York City Ballet.
In 1975, photographer Jill Krementz, known for her images of famous authors and for writing children’s books for which she also photographed, visited the school. She felt as if she had stepped into a painting by Degas and knew immediately that she wanted to make a book. She looked at auditions, she said in an interview, and when Stephanie was chosen to star as Marie in “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker,” Ms. Krementz realized she’d found her subject—and an enchanting one, too.
She followed Stephanie for a year, creating a rare, detailed behind-the-scenes portrait of a young dancer’s life. It took decades for reality TV or Instagram to demystify such private spaces.
Mrs. Krementz captured Mrs. Selby in routine maneuvers, such as warm-up exercises at the barre, and in dream moments, such as dancing on stage at Lincoln Center as Marie.
“A Very Young Dancer” (1976) jumped on the DailyExpertNews bestseller list for children. Fan mail poured in. Ms. Selby appeared on the “Today” show and in a one-hour Christmas special of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” And she fed the imagination of other young dancers.
“I remember studying every word and especially every picture in the book,” Dena Abergel, who read it when she was 7, recalled by email. “I completely identified with Stephanie and hoped to one day live in her ballet world.” She did, trained at the School of American Ballet, became a dancer with New York City Ballet and played a number of roles there. She is now the children’s ballet master of the company.
But just when Ms. Selby gave hope to aspiring ballerinas that they too could reach the pinnacle, her own dance career came to an abrupt end.
Despite the joy she found in dance, she was not always charmed by the dance life. She found the training boring. She often suffered from headaches, was excessively illegitimately absent, and made rude gestures to teachers that she felt were pushing her too much. Her star turn with City Ballet on stage in class counted for nothing. The summer before Stephanie turned 13, the school asked her to withdraw. She was devastated.
Admitting she was rejected would be humiliating. Stephanie wasn’t just any young woman who decided that the bootcamp-esque demands of dance weren’t for her; she was the heroine of a beloved book that had lifted her to unimaginable heights.
She decided, with her mother’s support, that instead of revealing her rejection, she would tell people she had quit. She wanted to go to university, she would say; dance would only get in the way.
That was the story she told for decades, until a Times reporter tracked her down in Wyoming in 2011 and wrote an article about her rejection. “Stephanie acknowledges that she may have had difficulties in life regardless of her association with ballet and the book,” the article said, “but says her experience as a child undoubtedly contributed to her depression later in life.”
Stephanie Mary Selby was born on October 14, 1965 in Manhattan. Her father, Frederick, who followed Fritz, was an investment banker and adventurer. Her mother, Linn (Howard) Selby, who had studied modern dance, continued the family tradition of installing the annual Neapolitan creche and Christmas tree at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Stephanie’s parents divorced when she and her older siblings, Andrea and Christopher, were very young. All four survive her.
The family lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and spent the summers on a family ranch in northwestern Wyoming, Cody, where Stephanie rode horseback and enjoyed the outdoors.
In Manhattan, she fell in love with ballet early on and followed her sister to the School of American Ballet, where she successfully auditioned at age 8. With her long auburn hair, Stephanie had an intense beauty, Andrea Selby said in an interview, adding, “She radiated from the soul.”
Written by Ms. Krementz in Stephanie’s voice, “A Very Young Dancer” provides a running commentary on what it feels like to be in Stephanie’s ballet slippers, accompanied by over 100 pages of black-and-white photographs. They include images of her works with “Mr. B.”, as she and others in his circle called Balanchine, who taught her to pass out on a bed without hurting herself.
“She became so famous so quickly,” her sister said. “Every kid had this book, and everywhere we went, every teacher we had in school, our friends’ parents, everyone assumed she would be a prima ballerina when she grew up.”
Hardly anyone understood that Mrs. Selby was struggling inside.
“When I made the book about Stephanie, there were thousands of 10-year-old girls who could only imagine a life like hers,” Ms Krementz said in an email. “They hadn’t dreamed, and neither had I, that she was already fighting demons that would haunt her for the rest of her life.”
When Mrs. Selby left ballet school, she rejoined her classes at the Sacred Heart Girls Monastery before attending Wesleyan University. She graduated in 1989 with a major in religion.
While trying to cope with her depression, she was prescribed various medications and sought professional psychiatric help, albeit only for a while.
She had always loved animals, especially horses, and for a short time worked as a ranger in New York city parks. Later, she lived occasionally in a Connecticut convent, where she milked cows, learned Latin, drove a tractor, prayed, and meditated.
In the late 1990s, she moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she worked with the homeless and those in crisis. “She had the burden she was born with – depression,” her sister said. “She had a hard time living her life on life’s terms. But she made it her mission to help others who have suffered.”
She moved to Wyoming full-time in 2007 to oversee a house her mother was building. During a Bible study group, she met John DePierro, whom she married. He worked as a cook, contractor, taxidermist and plumber, and she worked in a flower shop. They later divorced.
She lived in Cody and took jobs as a cook, tour guide and wrangler for several pack trip providers. She worked for a time in the health care and energy industry conglomerate Halliburton, in nearby Powell, Wyo, and volunteered at a Native American reservation near Cody, helping children with crafts and conducting Bible school classes.
She was also an active member of Streams of Life, a small evangelical church in Cody. Pete, an Australian sheepdog who was her therapy partner, was always around, either waiting for her outside the church or sneaking in to keep an eye on her. Pete was ill and recently put to sleep, a traumatic loss for Ms. Selby, pastor of the church, Ron Kingston, said in an interview.
Even though she was far from Lincoln Center, she still loved to dance, albeit in a less disciplined way than when she was a student. Occasionally during church services, Pastor Kingston said, she would get up and move with the music in a freestyle.
“She was spontaneous,” he said. “She set her feelings in motion and she was free.”
In the United States, if you have suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at: 800-273-8255 (VOICE) or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. To go here for sources outside the United States.