Background
Japanese-Americans were forbidden from traveling east of Chicago during World World War World War II As a result, her father was interned in Chicago under the United States Government"s Japanese American Internment policy.
Japanese-Americans were forbidden from traveling east of Chicago during World World War World War II As a result, her father was interned in Chicago under the United States Government"s Japanese American Internment policy.
Her Japanese father, Shoji Osato (1885-1955), and her Irish-French Canadian mother, Frances Fitzpatrick (1897-1954), were the caretakers of the Phoenix Pavilion and its Japanese garden, both of which had been built for World"s Columbian Exposition in 1893 from 1935 to 1941. Sono Osato was the oldest of three siblings. Her given name is Japanese for "garden".
She had two siblings.
Osato began her career at the age of fourteen with the Ballets Russe de Monte-Carlo. She later went on to dance with American Ballet Theatre (then Ballet Theatre).
While at 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. 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, and in occasional guest appearances on television series like The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1950).
She founded the Sono Osato Scholarship Program in Graduate Studies at Transition Foreign Dancers to help former dancers finance graduate work in both the professions and the liberal arts