Sono Osato, a Japanese-American dancer who toured the world with the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, performed with the Ballet Theater in New York and then gained acclaim on Broadway in the World War II-era musicals “One Touch of Venus” and “On the Town,” was found dead early Wednesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 99.

Her death was confirmed by her sons, Niko and Antonio Elmaleh.

In the 1930s, Ms. Osato was a groundbreaking presence in Col. Wassily de Basil’s Ballets Russes, the world’s most widely known ballet company. She was the company’s youngest dancer when she joined, at 14; she was also its first performer of Japanese descent.

She danced in the early 1940s with the Ballet Theater (now American Ballet Theater), where her dramatic projection left an impact on Antony Tudor’s ballets. She was Rosaline in his “Romeo and Juliet” and a woman of easy virtue in his “Pillar of Fire.”

Ms. Osato received a Donaldson Award for best female dancer for her performance in the 1943 show “One Touch of Venus,” choreographed by Agnes de Mille, which starred Mary Martin as the statue of a Greek goddess that comes to life in modern Manhattan.