Janet Reed

Janet Reed (September 15, 1916 – February 28, 2000) was an American ballerina and ballet mistress born in Tolo, Oregon. Her father, Charles Lindsay Reed, was a rancher and amateur dancer, and her mother, Esther Smith Reed, worked as a beautician. Reed began studying dance as a girl with Eve Benson and Isadora Moldovan in Medford, Oregon, before moving to Portland, where she received professional training primarily from Willam Christensen. She graduated from Lincoln High School in 1937 and subsequently joined one of Christensen's dancing groups in San Francisco.

Reed danced with the San Francisco Ballet as a leading ballerina from 1937 to 1941, performing the role of Odette-Odile in the company's first full-length production of Swan Lake in 1940. During this period she toured the West and Midwestern United States. In 1942 she relocated to New York City, initially joining Dance Players as a principal dancer under choreographer Eugene Loring. After that group disbanded, she supported herself by performing with pickup groups and teaching dance in a studio above the Apollo Theater in Harlem.

She joined Ballet Theatre in 1943, remaining with the company until 1947. There she worked with choreographers Agnes de Mille, George Balanchine, Michael Kidd, and Antony Tudor, touring North America. In 1944 she was cast as the Second Passerby in Jerome Robbins' first ballet, Fancy Free. Reed danced in the 1945 premiere of Interplay and appeared in Kidd and Tudor's On Stage the following year. Her Broadway credits include Interplay and Look, Ma, I'm Dancin'!, the latter a Robbins production in 1948.

That same year, Reed accepted an invitation from Balanchine to join the New York City Ballet. Balanchine cast her in neoclassical works including Symphony in C and Serenade, and created the final act of Bourrée Fantasque for her. In the 1953 revival of Lew Christensen's Filling Station, she portrayed a gas station attendant opposite Jacques d'Amboise. In 1954 she was cast as the courtesan in Con Amore and the dance-hall girl in Western Symphony. Her NYCB repertoire also included roles in Robbins' The Pied Piper, John Butler's The Unicorn and the Manticore, and numerous other works including Tally-Ho, Undertow, Dim Lustre, Waltz Academy, Pillar of Fire, Gala Performance, Graduation Ball, Mademoiselle Angot, Blue Beard, Pas de Quatre, Three Virgins and a Devil, Judgment of Paris, and Ivesiana.

In 1959 Reed was appointed ballet mistress of the New York City Ballet, working with dancers including Allegra Kent, Patricia McBride, Edward Villella, and Pacific Northwest Ballet founders Francia Russell and Kent Stowell. She left the NYCB in 1964 to spend more time with her family. Following her departure, she taught at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, founded a school in the Hudson Valley, and served as a consultant for United States Cultural Exchange Programs, recommending companies to represent American dance abroad.

Reed moved to Seattle in 1974 to assist in founding Pacific Northwest Dance, the precursor to Pacific Northwest Ballet, and served as its inaugural artistic director until 1976. She later returned to teach at the organization, continuing her association with it until 1996. Reed had been married to antiques dealer and interior designer Branson Erskine from 1946 until his death in 1994; they had a son and a daughter. She died in Seattle on February 28, 2000, of a stroke, at the age of 83. A memorial service was held in her honor in April 2000.