I can’t do it justice so I won’t try. If you haven’t read it yet, I’m jealous of you and also excited for you. I loved this book so much I hugged it.
I can’t do it justice so I won’t try. If you haven’t read it yet, I’m jealous of you and also excited for you. I keep buying it and giving it away. I am grateful that it exists and horrified that it sat on my bookshelf for a couple of months and what if I never picked it up and read it??
Two favorite excerpts, the first especially because it’s a phenomenon I have chafed at since I could remember, understood it was a way of insisting on the otherness of people of color, and could never articulate exactly why that was, but here it is, from a beautiful genius no less:
I have no illusions, by which I mean to tell you it is a fact, that one of the objectives of popular culture, popular media, is to make blackness appear to be inextricable from suffering, and suffering from blackness. ...Clever as hell if your goal is to make appear natural what is, in fact, by design.
And the delight? You have been reading a book of delights written by a black person. A book of black delight.
Daily as air.
And:
Goddamn. How often do you get to see someone slow dancing with a pigeon! And not thirty seconds later, walking toward Eighth, giggling at my good fortune, a tufted titmouse swooped by my head, landing on a wrought-iron gate, upon which a pedestrian walking past me immediately pulled from her snazzy jacket pocket a baggie of crumbs, and the bird hopped directly into her hand, nuzzling the goodies intermittent with tweeting toward its new pal, the bird and woman both nodding at me gawking at them, smiling at my bafflement, as though to say, We’re everywhere.
An engaging and fun memoir from Sono Osato, who seems to be the actual only 20th century Asian-American ballerina. I would love to be wrong but I can’An engaging and fun memoir from Sono Osato, who seems to be the actual only 20th century Asian-American ballerina. I would love to be wrong but I can’t think of a single one between Osato, born in 1919, and, say, Stella Abrera, born in 1978. (N.b. there are some beautiful Asian dancers in US ballet companies today, but homegrown Asian-American ballerinas remain so rare that it begs many questions.)
At 14, Osato was the first American dancer ever hired by the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, which toured the US before American ballet was a thing. She later danced for American Ballet Theatre, on Broadway and tv, and won acclaim in roles by Agnes De Mille and Jerome Robbins. She originated the role of Ivy Smith/Miss Turnstiles in On the Town, which was noteworthy in that the Miss Turnstiles beauty prize is specifically for an all-American girl; Osato was cast while her Japanese father was interned by the US government, deemed an enemy of the state because he ran a Japanese tea garden. He suffered two strokes as a result but eventually was able to hobble backstage with a cane to see her.
Despite hardships ranging from a strained relationship with her mother to the xenophobia she faced, Osato seems to have had a lot of fun. She traveled the world and got up to mischief with the preeminent ballerinas of the day. She describes touring the US by train for 8 or 9 months at a time, a stop per day and travel all night, with the choice of sleeping in an upright chair or joining poker games led by star Tatiana Riabouchinska’s mother. Some of the funnest parts are about notorious dance mom Mama Toumanova and the other Russian mamitchkas who joined the tours, competed over their daughters’ achievements (“we did four pirouettes today”), and served as extras on stage, carried on and off by giggling danseurs. At the same time, you see how alone Osato was in every respect (Andre Eglevsky taught her how to darn her pointe shoes, after learning from his own mama just so he could teach her).
On top of a trailblazing career, it’s evident that Osato had personality in spades, and I have a theory that you can tell that someone was a compelling performer based on their writing. Even at 14 and despite constant awareness of her outsider status, she refused to change her name to a Russian one, as was expected. Though ballet still conditions dancers, especially women, to be voiceless, she stood her ground again and again, whether about roles or costumes or labor conditions. Sometimes the only one willing to speak up, she was also aware that her fellow dancers, mostly Russian refugees, stood on shakier ground with their stateless nansen passports.
It’s annoying, though unsurprising, that there is so little awareness of Osato. I was disappointed that she wasn’t included in the otherwise super fun documentary Ballets Russes, though there is a nice tribute to Raven Wilkinson, the first Black ballerina to be hired into a major classical ballet company (Wilkinson had a terrifying time touring in the Jim Crow south and ultimately left for Europe; she was never hired as a dancer in the US again). Who knows, maybe by then Osato was too busy enjoying life and being fabulous. She married a real estate developer and seems to have had a happy home life. I Googled her and after her death at age 99, her Bridgehampton home listed for sale at $34 million – I really enjoy thinking of Osato living in splendor after a hard-fought career. ...more
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