Collins, Janet 1917–

views updated May 21 2018

Janet Collins 1917–

Dancer, choreographer, teacher

Painting was Open to Blacks; Dance Was Not

Studied Her Craft Intensively

Judged Solely on Talent at the Met

Dedicated Herself to Teaching

Selected works

Sources

Janet Collins broke the color barrier in classical ballet when she became the first black prima ballerina to dance at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House as a permanent member of the Metropolitan Opera. The sensational and exquisite dancer found as a teen there was no room for blacks in ballet, but was judged for her talent alone when she joined the Met in 1951. She performed with the Met and on her own for years before dedicating herself to teaching, and ultimately to religious painting. Collins fascinated critics and balletomanes alike with her exquisite sense of movement, both in her own dancing and through her choreography. “You could show Janet a movement, and immediately it became something that nobody else could do. But she did not alter it,” former partner Loren Hightower recalled in Dance magazine. “It was as if Janet looked inward, and a strange power that she had seemed to come from there… it was magic, hypnotic. It was totally intuitive, and when anything is that unadornedly genuine, it’s absolutely compelling.”

Painting was Open to Blacks; Dance Was Not

Janet Faye Collins was born in New Orleans on March 2, 1917, one of six children of a hardworking tailor and seamstress. She moved with her family to Los Angeles in 1921, where at the age of ten she began to study dance. Some reports claim she was unable to enroll in regular classes—reserved for white dancers—so was forced to study with a private teacher. Others suggest she enrolled at the Catholic Community Center where her mother agreed to sew costumes for the center in exchange for her daughter’s classes.

Collins was also a talented visual artist, and her family encouraged her to forgo dance for painting which, at the time, offered more opportunities to blacks. She studied art at Los Angeles City College and the Los Angeles Art Center School. Though an art-major student on a scholarship, Collins continued to study dance with Adolph Bolm, Carmelita Maracci, and Mia Slaven-ska, among others.

Most of Collins’ training had been classical, but she found a cool reception in the world of professional ballet. Collins auditioned for Leonide Massine, then director of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, when the company performed in Los Angeles during its American tour. As the girls were called by Massine to audition

At a Glance …

Born on March 2, 1917 in New Orleans, LA. Education: Los Angeles City College and Los Angeles Art Center School, studied painting; studied ballet with Adolph Bolm, Carmelita Maracci, Mia Slavenska, and Madam Toscanini; San Francisco School of Ballet, attended, 1954; studied Hebrew music with composer Ernest Bloch; studied modern dance under Lester Horton; studied Spanish dance with Angel Casino; studied choreography under Doris Humphrey and Hanya Holm.

Career: Dancer, performed as a teen in vaudeville shows; Los Angeles Musical Productions, principal dancer, 1940-41; Katherine Dunham and Lester Horn dance companies, princ. dancer c. 1941; formed duo with Talley Beatty; performed in film Thrill of Brazil, 1946; first solo recital, Las Palmas Theater, Los Angeles, 1947; New York debut, 92nd Street “Y,” 1949; Cole Porter’s Out of This World, princ. dancer, 1950; Metropolitan Opera, prima ballerina, 1951-54; Columbia Artists Management, choreographer, solo performer, 1952-55, Choreographer, 1947-74; Teacher: Modern Dance School of American Ballet, 1949-52; Saint Joseph School for the Deaf, 1959-61; Marymount Manhattan College, 1959-69; Manhattanviile College of Sacred Heart, 1961-65; Mother Butler Memorial High School, 1966; Scripps College and Mafundi Institute, c. 1970. Religious painter, 1974.

Awards: Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, 1945; named The Most Outstanding Debutante of the Season, Dance magazine, 1949; Merit Award, 1950; Young Woman of the Year, Mademoiselle magazine, 1950; Donaldson Award for best dancer on Broadway, 1951; The Committee for the Negro in the Arts, honoree, 1950; guest of honor and keynote speaker, Eighth International Conference of Blacks in Dance, 1995.

one by one, a hush fell over the dancers when Collins took her turn. Massine saw talent in Collins, but could not get past the budding dancer’s skin color. He offered her a place in the company—on the condition that she paint her skin white for performances. Collins was crushed. She declined and cried all the way home. “I thought talent mattered, not color,” Collins was quoted as saying by U.S. News & World Report. When she arrived home, Collins’ Aunt Adele told her to keep practicing. “Don’t try to be good,” Collins quoted her as saying in U.S. News & World Report, “be excellent.” The Collins family was extremely proud of their background, according to Collins in U.S. News & World Report. Far from having any feelings of inferiority, she said, “they were arrogant. I had to overcome arrogance.”

Studied Her Craft Intensively

Other popular forms of dance were more open to Collins and her talent. While a teen, she performed as an adagio dancer in vaudeville shows. In 1940 she became the principal dancer for the Los Angeles musical theater productions of Run Little Chillun and The Mikado in Swing. She performed as a dancer for Columbia Studios in The Thrill of Brazil, a film choreographed by Jack Cole, that featured her in the “Rendezvous in Rio” macumba. Modern dance also welcomed blacks, and Collins performed with the notable companies of Lester Horton and Katherine Dunham. Though the companies were open, the practice space was not—Collins and her dance partner still had to sneak into the dance studios before hours to rehearse, as the space was closed to blacks.

Collins studied at the San Francisco School of Ballet after receiving a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship of $1,800 in 1945. Here, she began to develop her own talents as a choreographer. She was intrigued by liturgical dance, and also studied in Oregon with composer Ernest Bloch, a Hebrew music expert. She began to produce a diverse repertory, with several works that explored her French as well as her black heritage—as well as dances created to spirituals; Collins based other routines on life in New Orleans. Her dance Blackamoor was choreographed to music by Bach, and told the story of life in Louis XIV’s court from the perspective of a young black page. After Collins’s first solo concert, she was unable to escape critical praise for her dance, as well as for her costumes, which she had designed. Her one-night performance at the Las Palmas Theater in Los Angeles earned her a scholarship to study composition under Doris Humphrey in New York City. The concert was a hit, but was not as successful financially, and Collins paid her own way to New York.

New York opened its arms to Collins after her debut there in 1949. Her audition for a showcase of young dancers at the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Association on 92nd Street (also known as the 92nd Street “Y”) was telling. “Janet did a dance to a Mozart rondo,” Muriel Stuart, a member of the audition committee, recalled in Dance. “When she finished, there was applause. I mean spontaneous applause. I mean we clapped, we shouted, we stamped our feet.” Collins performed two solos in the show on February 20, 1949, stunning New York critics just as she had those in Los Angeles. Herald Tribune critic Walter Terry, wrote that “it took no more (and probably less) than eight measures of movement in the opening dance to establish her claim to dance distinction…She could, and probably would stop a Broadway show in its tracks.” After another Y showcase and a solo performance there, Collins was named “The Most Outstanding Debutante of the Season” in the May 1949 issue of Dance magazine.

Judged Solely on Talent at the Met

As Terry had predicted, Collins soon was dancing on Broadway. She was cast as the principal dancer Cole Porter’s Out of This World, which opened on December 21, 1950. Again, the critics were generous with their praise—in many reviews, she earned more print space than the production’s theatrical leads. “Janet Collins dances with something of the speed of light,” Compass critic Arthur Pollack wrote, “seeming to touch the floor only occasionally with affectionate feet, caressing it as if she loved it and, loving, wanted to calm any fears it might have that in her flight she would leave it and never come back.” Later that year she was named “Young Woman of the Year” by Mademoiselle magazine. She also appeared on television, on variety shows such as The Admiral Broadway Review, This is Show Business, and the Paul Draper and Jack Haley shows. She received scholarships to study ballet under Madam Toscanini, daughter of celebrated Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, and modern dance with Hanya Holm, who choreographed Collins’s part in Out of This World. She also was recognized by the black community. The Committee for the Negro in the Arts praised Collins “for outstanding contributions as an artist to the cultural life of the United States and to the struggles of the Negro people and their artists for full equality and freedom,” according to Dance magazine. In 1951 she earned the Donaldson Award for the best dancer on Broadway.

Zachary Solov, the new ballet master of the Metropolitan Opera, first saw Collins in Out of This World. “She walked across the stage,” he recalled in Dance, “pulling a chiffon curtain, and it was electric. The body just spoke.” Solov instantly set his sights on her for a new production of Aida he was choreographing. Solov told Rudolf Bing, the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager, that Collins was “wonderful,” according to Dance, and Bing made the decision to hire her as the first black prima ballerina of the Met, in 1951. Though the Met had previously engaged blacks to play specialty roles, Collins was the company’s first full-time black dancer.

Solov used Collins’s own movement to choreograph her part in Aida, which firmly established Collins as a “dancing sensation,” according to Dance writer Yael Lewin. Collins remained with the Met until 1954, inspiring Solov in three new productions. She appeared in Carmen as a gypsy in 1952; in La Gioconda in 1952 as the Queen of the Night in the “Dance of the Hours,” notably the only time she performed at the Met on pointe; and in Samson et Dalila in 1953. While Collins’s dressing room at the Met was located on the first floor, where all the stars’ dressing rooms were assigned, she often lost her star status when the company left New York City on tour. When the company performed in Memphis and Atlanta, Collins was replaced by understudies. Bing and Solov threatened not to return unless blacks were permitted to perform and allowed a room in any hotel, with the rest of the company. Collins even encountered discrimination in Canada. Once in Toronto, Collins and her dance partner were told by the man at the door of an obviously open restaurant that the place was closed. According to her partner, Collins told the man that it was pity because she had heard so many good things about his restaurant, and asked if he might suggest another one open nearby. Collins “behaved like a queen,” her partner, Loren Hightower, told Dance.

Dedicated Herself to Teaching

While with the Met, Collins also kept up a rigorous solo touring schedule, performing her own choreography for Columbia Artists Management. She also taught modern dance at the School of American Ballet from 1949 to 1952, and she began to volunteer her time for charity. In 1957, she taught dance at St. Joseph’s School for the Deaf in the Bronx. Because “dance is a mute and living art form,” Collins wrote in an article, according to Dance, it is an ideal tool for deaf children, whom she claimed displayed a natural ability of for pantomime, while many speaking, hearing people are immobile.

Collins began to bind her teaching with her increasing commitment to Roman Catholicism. She ignored North American and European tour offers to teach full time and to develop her own troupe. She was known as a demanding teacher who required her students to study human anatomy and undergo extensive physical training—in short, she expected no more of them than she would of herself. She took concurrent positions at Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart at Purchase, New York, Mother Butler Memorial High School, and Marymount Manhattan College where, in 1965, she premiered Genesis, a dance she had been working on for more than ten years. In 1970, already relocated to California, Collins returned to the opera world one last time as choreographer of Nabucco for the San Francisco Opera. She also taught at Scripps College and the Mafundi Institute. Her final New York City premiere was Canticle of the Elements, which she choreographed for the Alvin Ailey Dance Company in 1974. The company continues to perform Collins’s Spirituals, a work she first danced and choreographed in 1947. “The movement radiated from a central axis onstage and kept returning to it” Dance critic Doris Hering wrote of Spirituals in 1949. “The whole body was constantly, ripplingly, in motion, and yet there was a … calm about the whole conception.”

Collins donated her professional archives to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, but the documentation ceased at 1974. It took more than twenty years for the always elusive Collins to resurface, when she appeared in Philadelphia as the keynote speaker at the Eighth International Conference of Blacks in Dance in 1995. The great dancer revealed that she had returned to her other creative talent, painting, and was painting religious subjects exclusively. The living room in her Seattle home was her studio. 2001 marked the 50th anniversary of her debut with the Met, and she was living and still painting in Fort Worth, Texas.

Selected works

(as dancer)

Run Little Chillun, 1940.

The Mikado in Swing, 1940.

(at the Met)

Aida.

Carmen.

La Gioconda.

Samson et Dalila.

(as choreographer)

Blackamoor, 1947.

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, 1947.

Spirituals, 1947.

Protest, 1947.

Après le Mardi Gras, 1947.

Juba, 1949.

Three Psalms of David, 1949.

Moi L’Aimé Toi, 1951.

Chére, 1951.

The Satin Slipper, 1960.

Genesis, 1965.

Cockfight, 1972.

Birds of Peace and Pride, 1973.

Song, 1973.

Fire Weaver, 1973.

Sunday and Sister Jones, 1973.

Canticle of the Elements, 1974.

Sources

Books

Complete Marquis Who’s Who, Marquis Who’s Who, 2001.

Smith, Jessie Carney, editor, Notable Black American Women, Book I, Gale Research, 1992.

Periodicals

Dance, February 1997, p. 66.

Jet, November 19, 2001, p. 26.

—Brenna Sanchez

Contemporary Black Biography Sanchez, Brenna

Collins, Janet

views updated May 23 2018

Janet Collins

1917-2003

Painter, ballet dancer, choreographer, teacher

Janet Collins broke the color barrier in classical ballet when she became the first black prima ballerina to become a permanent member of New York's Metropolitan Opera. Luckily the sensational and exquisite dancer persevered after finding as a teen that ballet was not open to blacks. She became one of only a few blacks to rise to prominence in American classical ballet when she joined the Met in 1951. Collins fascinated critics and balletomanes alike with her exquisite sense of movement, both in her own dancing and through her choreography. "You could show Janet a movement, and immediately it became something that nobody else could do. But she did not alter it," former partner Loren Hightower recalled in Dance magazine. "It was as if Janet looked inward, and a strange power that she had seemed to come from there…it was magic, hypnotic. It was totally intuitive, and when anything is that unadornedly genuine, it's absolutely compelling." Most active during the 1950s as a dancer, Collins later dedicated herself to teaching, and ultimately to religious painting.

Became a Stand-Out Dancer

Most of Collins' training had been classical, but she found a cool reception in the world of professional ballet. Collins auditioned for Leonide Massine, then director of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, when the company performed in Los Angeles during its American tour. As the girls were called by Massine to audition one by one, a hush fell over the dancers when Collins took her turn. Massine saw talent in Collins, but could not get past the budding dancer's skin color. He offered her a place in the company—on the condition that she paint her skin white for performances. Collins was crushed. She declined and cried all the way home. "I thought talent mattered, not color," Collins was quoted as saying by U.S. News & World Report. When she arrived home, Collins' Aunt Adele told her to keep practicing. "Don't try to be good," Collins quoted her as saying in U.S. News & World Report, "be excellent." The Collins family was extremely proud of their background, according to Collins in U.S. News & World Report. Far from having any feelings of inferiority, she said, "they were arrogant. I had to overcome arrogance."

Other popular forms of dance were more open to Collins and her talent. While a teen, she performed as an adagio dancer in vaudeville shows. In 1940 she became the principal dancer for the Los Angeles musical theater productions of Run Little Chillun and The Mikado in Swing. She performed as a dancer for Columbia Studios in The Thrill of Brazil, a film choreographed by Jack Cole, that featured her in the "Rendezvous in Rio" scene. Modern dance also welcomed blacks, and Collins performed with the notable companies of Lester Horton and Katherine Dunham. Though the companies were open, the practice space was not—Collins and her dance partner still had to sneak into the dance studios before hours to rehearse, as the space was closed to blacks.

Solo Performance Became Ticket to New York

After Collins's first solo concert, she received much critical praise for her dance, as well as for her costumes, which she had designed. Her one-night performance at the Las Palmas Theater in Los Angeles earned her a scholarship to study composition under Doris Humphrey in New York City. The concert was a critical hit, but was not as successful financially, and Collins paid her own way to New York.

New York opened its arms to Collins after her debut there in 1949. Her audition for a showcase of young dancers at the Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association on 92nd Street (also known as the 92nd Street "Y") was telling. "Janet did a dance to a Mozart rondo," Muriel Stuart, a member of the audition committee, recalled in Dance. "When she finished, there was applause. I mean spontaneous applause. I mean we clapped, we shouted, we stamped our feet." Collins performed two solos in the show on February 20, 1949, stunning New York critics just as she had those in Los Angeles. Herald Tribune critic Walter Terry, wrote that "it took no more (and probably less) than eight measures of movement in the opening dance to establish her claim to dance distinction…She could, and probably would stop a Broadway show in its tracks." After another Y showcase and a solo performance there, Collins was named "The Most Outstanding Debutante of the Season" in the May 1949 issue of Dance magazine.

At a Glance …

Born on March 2, 1917, in New Orleans, LA; died on May 28, 2003, in Fort Worth, TX. Education: Los Angeles City College and Los Angeles Art Center School, studied painting; studied ballet with Adolph Bolm, Carmelita Maracci, Mia Slavenska, and Madam Toscanini; San Francisco School of Ballet, attended, 1954; studied Hebrew music with composer Ernest Bloch; studied modern dance under Lester Horton; studied Spanish dance with Angel Casino; studied choreography under Doris Humphrey and Hanya Holm.

Career: Dancer, performed as a teen in vaudeville shows; Los Angeles Musical Productions, principal dancer, 1940-41; Katherine Dunham and Lester Horn dance companies, principal dancer 1941(?); formed duo with Talley Beatty; performed in film Thrill of Brazil, 1946; first solo recital, Las Palmas Theater, Los Angeles, 1947; New York debut, 92nd Street "Y," 1949; Cole Porter's Out of This World, principal dancer, 1950; Metropolitan Opera, prima ballerina, 1951-54; Columbia Artists Management, choreographer, solo performer, 1952-55. Choreographer, 1947-74; Teacher: Modern Dance School of American Ballet, 1949-52; Saint Joseph School for the Deaf, 1959-61; Marymount Manhattan College, 1959-69; Manhattanville College of Sacred Heart, 1961-65; Mother Butler Memorial High School, 1966; Scripps College and Mafundi Institute, 1970(?). Religious painter, 1974-2003.

Awards: Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, 1945; named The Most Outstanding Debutante of the Season, Dance magazine, 1949; Merit Award, 1950; Young Woman of the Year, Mademoiselle magazine, 1950; The Committee for the Negro in the Arts, honoree, 1950; Donaldson Award for best dancer on Broadway, 1951; guest of honor and keynote speaker, Eighth International Conference of Blacks in Dance, 1995.

As Terry had predicted, Collins soon was dancing on Broadway. She was cast as the principal dancer in Cole Porter's Out of This World, which opened on December 21, 1950. Again, the critics were generous with their praise; in many reviews, she earned more print space than the production's theatrical leads. "Janet Collins dances with something of the speed of light," Compass critic Arthur Pollack wrote, "seeming to touch the floor only occasionally with affectionate feet, caressing it as if she loved it and, loving, wanted to calm any fears it might have that in her flight she would leave it and never come back." Later that year she was named "Young Woman of the Year" by Mademoiselle magazine. She also appeared on television, on variety shows such as The Admiral Broadway Review, This Is Show Business, and the Paul Draper and Jack Haley shows. She received scholarships to study ballet under Madam Toscanini, daughter of celebrated Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, and modern dance with Hanya Holm, who choreographed Collins's part in Out of This World. She also was recognized by the black community. The Committee for the Negro in the Arts praised Collins "for outstanding contributions as an artist to the cultural life of the United States and to the struggles of the Negro people and their artists for full equality and freedom," according to Dance magazine. In 1951 she earned the Donaldson Award for the best dancer on Broadway.

Joined the Met

Zachary Solov, the new ballet master of the Metropolitan Opera, first saw Collins in Out of This World. "She walked across the stage," he recalled in Dance, "pulling a chiffon curtain, and it was electric. The body just spoke." Solov instantly set his sights on her for a new production of Aida he was choreographing. Solov told Rudolf Bing, the Metropolitan Opera's general manager, that Collins was "wonderful," according to Dance, and Bing made the decision to hire her as the first black prima ballerina of the Met, in 1951. Though the Met had previously engaged blacks to play specialty roles, Collins was the company's first full-time black dancer.

Solov used Collins's own movement to choreograph her part in Aida, which firmly established Collins as a "dancing sensation," according to Dance writer Yael Lewin. Collins remained with the Met until 1954, inspiring Solov in three new productions. She appeared in Carmen as a gypsy in 1952; in La Gioconda in 1952 as the Queen of the Night in the "Dance of the Hours," notably the only time she performed at the Met on pointe; and in Samson et Dalila in 1953. While Collins's dressing room at the Met was located on the first floor, where all the stars' dressing rooms were assigned, she often lost her star status when the company left New York City on tour. When the company performed in Memphis and Atlanta, Collins was replaced by understudies because the southern venues refused to allow blacks to perform onstage with whites. Bing and Solov threatened not to return unless blacks were permitted to perform and allowed a room in any hotel, with the rest of the company. Collins even encountered discrimination in Canada. Once in Toronto, Collins and her dance partner were told by the man at the door of an obviously open restaurant that the place was closed. According to her partner, Collins told the man that it was pity because she had heard so many good things about his restaurant, and asked if he might suggest another one open nearby. Collins "behaved like a queen," her partner, Loren Hightower, told Dance.

While with the Met, Collins also kept up a rigorous solo touring schedule, performing her own choreography for Columbia Artists Management. She also taught modern dance at the School of American Ballet from 1949 to 1952, and she began to volunteer her time for charity. She retired from the Met in 1954, when she began focusing more on choreography and instruction. In 1957, she taught dance at St. Joseph's School for the Deaf in the Bronx. Because "dance is a mute and living art form," Collins wrote in an article, according to Dance, it is an ideal tool for deaf children, whom she claimed displayed a natural ability of for pantomime, while many speaking, hearing people are immobile.

Devoted More Time to Her Spirituality

Collins began to bind her teaching with her increasing commitment to Roman Catholicism. She ignored North American and European tour offers to teach full time and to develop her own troupe. She was known as a demanding teacher who required her students to study human anatomy and undergo extensive physical training—in short, she expected no more of them than she would of herself. She took concurrent positions at Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart at Purchase, New York, Mother Butler Memorial High School, and Marymount Manhattan College where, in 1965, she premiered Genesis, a dance she had been working on for more than ten years. In 1970, already relocated to California, Collins returned to the opera world one last time as choreographer of Nabucco for the San Francisco Opera. She also taught at Scripps College and the Mafundi Institute. Her final New York City premiere was Canticle of the Elements, which she choreographed for the Alvin Ailey Dance Company in 1974. The company continues to perform Collins's Spirituals, a work she first danced and choreographed in 1947. "The movement radiated from a central axis onstage and kept returning to it" Dance critic Doris Hering wrote of Spirituals in 1949. "The whole body was constantly, ripplingly, in motion, and yet there was a…calm about the whole conception."

Collins donated her professional archives to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, but the documentation ceased at 1974. It took more than twenty years for the always elusive Collins to resurface, when she appeared in Philadelphia as the keynote speaker at the Eighth International Conference of Blacks in Dance in 1995. The great dancer revealed that she had returned to her other creative talent, painting, and was painting religious subjects exclusively. The living room in her Seattle home was her studio. 2001 marked the 50th anniversary of her debut with the Met; at the time she was living and still painting in Fort Worth, Texas, where she had moved to live closer to family members. On May 28, 2003, Collins died in Forth Worth at the age of 86.