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Janet Collins: a Spirit That Knows No Bounds

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Janet Collins: a Spirit That Knows No Bounds Disclaimer: This is a machine generated PDF of selected content from our databases. This functionality is provided solely for your convenience and is in no way intended to replace original scanned PDF. Neither Cengage Learning nor its licensors make any representations or warranties with respect to the machine generated PDF. The PDF is automatically generated "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" and are not retained in our systems. CENGAGE LEARNING AND ITS LICENSORS SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ANY AND ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTIES FOR AVAILABILITY, ACCURACY, TIMELINESS, COMPLETENESS, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Your use of the machine generated PDF is subject to all use restrictions contained in The Cengage Learning Subscription and License Agreement and/or the Gale In Context: Biography Terms and Conditions and by using the machine generated PDF functionality you agree to forgo any and all claims against Cengage Learning or its licensors for your use of the machine generated PDF functionality and any output derived therefrom. Janet Collins: a spirit that knows no bounds Author: Yael Lewin Date: Feb. 1997 From: Dance Magazine(Vol. 71, Issue 2) Publisher: Dance Magazine, Inc. Document Type: Biography Length: 2,695 words Content Level: (Level 4) About this Person Born: March 02, 1917? in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States Died: May 28, 2003 in Fort Worth, Texas, United States Nationality: American Occupation: Ballet dancer Other Names: Collins, Janet Faye Full Text: The African American ballerina who broke a color barrier at the Metropolitan Opera has also lived, a full life out of the spotlight. Janet Collins occupies a special place in dance history as the Metropolitan Opera's first African American prima ballerina. Her celebrated achievement, however, was only a part of a rich and varied career. Janet Fay Collins was born in New Orleans on March 2, 1917. Her family moved to Los Angeles in 1921, where at the age of ten she enrolled for her first dance classes at the Catholic Community Center. Unable to afford the lessons, her mother agreed to sew costumes for the center's student recitals in exchange. Because Collins was also a talented artist, her family hoped that she would pursue painting as a career rather than dance, which, at the time, offered very limited opportunities to blacks. She did become an art major at Los Angeles City College, later transferring to the Los Angeles Art Center School when she received a scholarship. But she continued to study dance with, among others, Adolph Bolm, Carmelita Maracci, and Mia Slavenska. Despite Collins's strong classical training, she received little encouragement in the world of professional ballet. When the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo performed in Los Angeles as part of its American tour, Collins auditioned for Leonide Massine, then director of the company. Massine told her he greatly admired her dancing, but he could accept her for the corps only if she painted her face white. Popular culture was more hospitable. During her high school years, Collins had performed as an adagio dancer in vaudeville bookings. In 1940 she became the principal dancer for the Los Angeles musical theater productions of Run Little Chillun and The Mikado in Swing. Columbia Studios also hired her to perform in The Thrill of Brazil, a film choreographed by Jack Cole, that featured her in the "Rendezvous in Rio" macumba. Blacks were also accepted in modern dance; Collins performed with the companies of Lester Horton and Katherine Dunham. She and her partner, Talley Beatty, still had to sneak into the dance studios very early in the morning to rehearse, however, because blacks were not permitted to use the space. In 1945 Collins received a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship of $1,800 that enabled her to study at the San Francisco School of Ballet and to begin working on her own choreography. Fascinated by liturgical dance, she also studied in Oregon with composer Ernest Bloch, an authority on Hebrew music. A diverse repertory evolved, including several works that reflected her French as well as her black heritage. Some were created to spirituals; others were based on life in New Orleans. One unusual dance, Blackamoor, set to music by J. S. Bach, was about life at the court of Louis XIV as seen through the eyes of a little black page. Collins's first concert, a single evening on November 3, 1948, at the Las Palmas Theater in Los Angeles, left critics hailing her as a unique performer. "Seldom indeed is anyone able to convey meaning and mood as does Miss Collins," said the Los Angeles Daily News, "for not only is her pantomime telling, her grace matchless, but she has the rare talent, even in her almost stylized numbers, of reaching out to her audience and making them share emotions that her characters are portraying." She was also praised for her striking costumes, all of which she had designed. This concert and several subsequent appearances were artistic but not financial triumphs; Collins paid for her train ticket to the East Coast mostly through her portrait painting. When she arrived in New York City in 1949 she had only two hundred dollars to live on. Quickly she arranged an audition for a concert the 92nd Street YMHA was presenting as a showcase for young dance artists. "You can imagine how hard-boiled a bunch of New York dance teachers are," said Muriel Stuart, a member of the audition committee. "Janet did a dance to a Mozart rondo. When she finished, there was applause. I mean spontaneous applause. I mean we clapped, we shouted, we stamped our feet." The concert took place on February 20, 1949, and the critics were equally stunned, including Walter Terry, who wrote in the Herald Tribune 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 as easily as she could and will cause a concert-going audience to shout for encores." After another shared concert at the YMHA on March 19 and one of her own on April 2, Collins was named in the May 1949 Dance Magazine "The Most Outstanding Debutante of the Season." Terry's predictions came true. Hanya Holm, impressed by Collins's performances, cast her in Cole Porter's mythological spoof, Out of This World, that she was choreographing for Broadway. (Agnes de Mille was the original director, but veteran George Abbott eventually replaced her.) Collins played the minor role of Night, whose function was to create an atmosphere in which Jupiter could seduce a mortal woman. After the show opened on December 21, 1950, the critics again could not praise her enough; often she earned more space in the reviews than the stars Charlotte Greenwood, William Eythe, and David Burns. Arthur Pollack wrote poetically in the Compass that "Janet Collins dances with something of the speed of light, 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." The Savannah Evening Press added: "It is the completely captivating Janet Collins that gives the show a wallop. Only she is truly out of this world." Still more recognition was showered upon Collins in 1950 when she was named "Young Woman of the Year" and given a Merit Award, courtesy of Mademoiselle magazine. Television and radio appearances followed. Nineteen-fifty was also marked by recognition from the black community: The Committee for the Negro in the Arts lauded 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." Finally, she won the Donaldson Award for the best dancer on Broadway in 1951. That same year, Zachary Solov, the new ballet master of the Metropolitan Opera, saw Collins in Out of This World. "She walked across the stage," he recalls, "pulling a chiffon curtain, and it was electric. The body just spoke." Solov knew instantly that she was perfect for the new production of Aida he was about to choreograph. He immediately went to Rudolf Bing, the Met's general manager, and told him that he wanted to hire that she was black. "Is she good?" Bing asked. "She's wonderful!" exclaimed Solov. "Hire her," Bing decreed. Inspired by her movement, Solov was able to prepare the choreography in only a few rehearsals. He featured her as an Ethiopian slave in the spectacular second act Triumphal Scene, where she was partnered by two Watusi warriors (actually white men in body tights and blackface). After the premiere on November 13, which included thirteen black singers in the chorus as Ethiopian captives, P. W. Manchester in Dance News praised "the supple ferocity of the lithe and feline Janet Collins," observing that "the ballet rightly becomes the peak of the scene instead of, as usually happens, the somewhat embarrassing anticlimax." In one dramatic moment, Collins raised herself high on the shoulder of one of the chorus men, and then fell slowly into the arms of fifteen others. The Aida role was restaged in later years for her first cousin, Carmen de Lavallade, who remembers the thrill of using Collins's dressing room as "one of those experiences you'll never forget." It was a dressing room on the first floor that the old Met assigned to stars, instead of on the second floor where the rest of the dancers were placed.
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