An accomplished ballerina of Japanese American descent who made her debut at age 14 in the world renown Col. Wassily de Basil’s Ballets Russes has been found dead at the age of 99, reports the New York Times.
Despite wide acclaim, a feature in Danceline done several years ago documented how racism forced Sono to hide her ethnicity and even apply make up to downplay her Asian features.
The Russian troupe asked her to change her name to Russian. She refused.
“My name remained my own”, she said. Still she became known as Sonotchka within the company.
Sono’s father, Shoji, is Japanese. Her mother is Irish-French-Canadian. Shoji immigrated to the United States at the age of 19 and became a photographer. He married his wife Frances Fitzpatrick in Iowa because it was illegal to do so in Nebraska.
Sono danced with de Basil for six years, but eventually quit, frustrated that the company would not promote her to principal artist and pay her a decent salary.
According to the New York Times, she lived in fear after Pearl Harbor.
“My heritage had never been hidden,” Ms. Osato said in a 2009 interview. “I thought, ‘Oh, my God, people in the audience who had a child in Hawaii. What if someone throws something at me? What’s going to happen if they hiss at me?’ ”
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