Sono Osato

Osato was born in Omaha, Nebraska. She was the oldest of three children of a Japanese father (Shoji Osato, 1885–1955) and a Canadian mother of French-Irish origin (Frances Fitzpatrick, 1897–1954).The Garden of the Phoenix:

The 120th Anniversary of the Japanese Garden in Chicago Fig. 1 The Phoenix Pavilion on the Wooded Island, 1893 (courtesy of The Chicago Public Library, Special Collections) by Robert W. Karr Jr. Published in The Journal of the North American Japanese Garden Association, Issue No. 1, 2013 Her family moved to Chicago in 1925 in order to be closer to Frances' family, and Shoji opened a photography studio there. In 1927, when she was eight, Osato's mother took her and her sister to Europe for two years; while in Monte Carlo, they attended a performance of Cléopâtre by Sergei Diaghilev's famous Ballets Russes company, which inspired Osato to start ballet classes when she returned to Chicago in late 1929.{{Cite web|url=http://michaelminn.net/andros/biographies/osato_sono/|title=Sono Osato (b. 1919)|website=michaelminn.net|access-date=2018-12-27}}{{Cite book|title=Bernstein Meets Broadway: Collaborative Art in a Time of War|last=Oja|first=Carol|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2014|pages=121}} She studied with prominent dancers Berenice Holmes and Adolph Bolm.

She performed with ballet companies Ballets Russe de Monte-Carlo and the American Ballet Theatre. As an actress, she starred alongside Frank Sinatra in the film The Kissing Bandit.

Osato began her career at the age of fourteen with Wassily de Basil's Ballets Russe de Monte-Carlo, which at the time was the world's most well known ballet company; she was the youngest member of the troupe, their first American dancer and their first dancer of Japanese descent.{{Cite web|url=http://blogs.wfmt.com/offmic/2016/01/08/sono-osato-96-reflects-on-dancing-with-the-ballet-russe-de-monte-carlo/|title=Sono Osato, 96, Reflects on Dancing With the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo|date=2016-01-08|website=On WFMT|language=en-US|access-date=2018-12-27}} De Basil tried to persuade Osato to change her name to a Russian name, but she refused to do so. She spent six years touring the United States, Europe, Australia and South America with the company, leaving in 1941 as she felt her career was stagnating. She went to study at the School of American Ballet in New York City for six months, then joined the American Ballet Theatre as a dancer. While at the ABT, she danced roles in such ballets as Kenneth MacMillan's Sleeping Beauty, Antony Tudor's Pillar of Fire, and Bronislava Nijinska's The Beloved.{{cite news|url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-thodos-dance-preview-ent-0106-20160105-column.html|title=Dancer Sono Osato inspires Thodos' new 'Journey'|newspaper=Chicago Tribune|access-date=December 27, 2018}}{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TrIiBAAAQBAJ&q=sono+osato+sleeping+beauty+Pillar+of+Fire&pg=PA129|title=Bernstein Meets Broadway: Collaborative Art in a Time of War|isbn=9780199862108|access-date=December 27, 2018|last1=Oja|first1=Carol J.|date=July 25, 2014|publisher=Oxford University Press }}

File:Sono Osato in Francesca da Rimini costume. (6174097084).jpg costume, 1930s]]

As a musical theater performer, her Broadway credits included principal dancer in One Touch of Venus (a performance for which she received a Donaldson Award in 1943), Ivy Smith in the original On the Town, and Cocaine Lil in Ballet Ballads.{{cite web|url=https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/ballet-ballads-2004|title=Ballet Ballads |website=IBDb.com|access-date=2017-01-24}}{{cite web|last=Oja|first=Carol J.|date=Jan–Feb 2015|title=The Original Miss Turnstiles: Sono Osato Starred on Broadway|url=https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2015/januaryfebruary/feature/the-original-miss-turnstiles|access-date=December 27, 2018|website=Humanities|publisher=National Endowment of Humanities}}

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Osato was encouraged to change her name to something more "American", and for a short time she used her mother's maiden name and performed as Sono Fitzpatrick. At around the same time, her father was arrested and detained in Chicago under the United States government's Japanese American Internment policy.{{cite web|url=http://www.oldnewyorkstories.com/post/11666572720/victor-elmaleh-94|title=Victor Elmaleh – 94|author=Peter Vidani|work=Tumblr |date=2011-10-25|publisher=Old New York Stories|access-date=2017-01-24}} In 1942, when the Ballet Theatre toured Mexico, Osato was unable to join the tour as Japanese Americans were barred from leaving the country, and she had several months without work. She was also unable to perform in California and other parts of the western United States when the company toured there later in the same year, as these states were deemed military areas and were off-limits for people of Japanese descent.

In the late 1940s and 1950s, Osato briefly pursued a career as an actress, appearing on Broadway in Peer Gynt, in the film The Kissing Bandit with Frank Sinatra, and in occasional guest appearances on television series such as, The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1950).{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1980/08/01/the-memoirs-of-a-working-ballerina/4cfab345-876e-453d-bc2d-85085da64518/?noredirect=on|title=The Memoirs of a Working Ballerina|newspaper=The Washington Post|access-date=December 27, 2018|date=August 1, 1980}}{{cite web|url=https://archive.org/details/Ellery_Queen_DuMont|title=The Adventures of Ellery Queen|access-date=December 27, 2018}}

In 1980, Osato published an autobiography titled Distant Dances.{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/distantdances00osat|title=Distant dances|last=Osato|first=Sono|date=1980|publisher=New York Knopf : distributed by Random House|isbn=9780394508917|edition=1st|url-access=registration}}{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1980/05/25/archives/the-recollections-of-a-dancer-dancer.html|title=The Recollections of a Dancer; Dancer|last=Hodgson|first=Moira|date=1980-05-25|work=The New York Times|access-date=2018-12-27|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}} In 2006, she founded the Sono Osato Scholarship Program in Graduate Studies at Career Transition For Dancers to help former dancers finance graduate work in both the professions and the liberal arts.{{cite web|url=https://www.danzaballet.com/sono-osato-to-be-honored/?print=print|title=Sono Osato to be Honored|date=August 7, 2008 |access-date=December 27, 2018|publisher=Danzaballet}}{{cite web|url=https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/CTFD-Announces-Additional-250K-Sono-Osato-Scholarship-Gift-20100413|title=CTFD Announces Additional $250K Sono Osato Scholarship Gift|website=Broadway World|access-date=December 27, 2018}} In 2016, Thodos Dance Company in Chicago presented a dance production based on her life, titled Sono's Journey.

Osato married real estate developer Victor Elmaleh in 1943, and they had two sons.{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/nyregion/victor-elmaleh-builder-and-entrepreneur-dies-at-95.html|title=Victor Elmaleh, Builder and Entrepreneur, Dies at 95|newspaper=The New York Times|date=November 23, 2014 |access-date=December 27, 2018|last1=Martin |first1=Douglas }} Elmaleh died in November 2014, aged 95.

Osato died at her home in Manhattan on December 26, 2018, at the age of 99.{{citation |last=Goldstein|first=Richard |title=Sono Osato, Japanese-American Ballet Star, Is Dead at 99| newspaper=The New York Times |date=December 26, 2018| url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/obituaries/sono-osato-dead.html}} She was the aunt of the installation artist of the same name, Sono Osato.{{cite news|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-08-15-ol-848-story.html|title=ART : Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Art|date=August 15, 1991|access-date=December 27, 2018|newspaper=Los Angeles Times}}

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{{Commons category|Sono Osato}}

• {{IMDb name|0651522}}
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• {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20110219120039/http://australiadancing.org/subjects/5101.html Australia Dancing – Lutte eternelle]}}
• [http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3414642 Photograph of Osato in costume]

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Category:1919 births

Category:2018 deaths

Category:American ballerinas

Category:American film actresses

Category:American musical theatre actresses

Category:American television actresses

Category:Donaldson Award winners

Category:American actresses of Japanese descent

Category:American people of Irish descent

Category:American people of French-Canadian descent

Category:Actresses from Omaha, Nebraska

Category:American dancers of Asian descent

Category:20th-century American actresses

Category:Dancers from Nebraska

Category:American autobiographers

Category:Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo dancers

Category:American women autobiographers

Category:21st-century American women

Category:20th-century American ballet dancers