Pioneer on Pointe: Janet Reed, the Early Years, 1916-1941

After taking time off to get married, have a child, and perform the dancing lead in Robbins' Look Ma, I'm Dancin'! on Broadway, in 1949 Reed joined New York City Ballet, where she gladdened people's hearts in Todd Bolender's Mother Goose Suite; a revival of Lew Christensen's Filling Station, and Balanchine's Bourrée Fantasque, in which she danced the leader of the third movement, Fête Polonaise, a role he created for her, as well as casting her in such technically challenging works as Serenade, Symphony in C, and Concerto Barocco. By the time she essentially left the stage in 1957 (from time to time she would return to performing, as she did in 1960 for Todd Bolender's Creation of the World, in which the choreographer said she was "absolutely perfect"2), Reed had worked with many of the leading choreographers of her day, creating comic characters such as the Queen of the Swamp Lilies in Ruthanna Boris' Cakewalk and the dance-hall girl in the second movement of Balanchine's Western Symphony, dancing an impeccably timed sendup of a romantic pas de deux and spoofing the sentimentality associated with such ballads as "Red River Valley."