Janet Collins

Janet Faye Collins (March 7, 1917 – May 28, 2003) was an African American prima ballerina, choreographer, and teacher born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Regarded as a pioneer of Black classical ballet, she was among the few formally trained Black dancers of her generation. A vowed oblate of the Benedictine order, Collins worked across Broadway, film, and television throughout her career.

Collins moved with her family from New Orleans to Los Angeles at age four, where she began her dance training at a Catholic community center. Her principal teachers included Carmelita Maracci, Lester Horton, and Adolph Bolm, three of the few ballet instructors of the era who accepted Black students. She also studied with Los Angeles teacher Dorothy Lyndall. At sixteen, in 1932, Collins successfully auditioned for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, but declined to join the company after being required to paint her face and skin white to perform. During the 1940s she collaborated with dancer Katherine Dunham and performed with the Dunham Company.

A significant turning point came in November 1948, when Collins appeared in a one-night program at the Las Palmas Theater in Los Angeles, earning strong critical notices. That same year she relocated to New York, where she danced her own choreography on a shared program at the 92nd Street YMHA. Her Broadway career included the 1950 Cole Porter musical Out of This World, for which she received the Donaldson Award for best dancer on Broadway in 1951. Her performance in that production brought her to the attention of Zachary Solov, then ballet master of the Metropolitan Opera.

Collins joined the Metropolitan Opera the year after Solov noticed her work, becoming the first Black ballerina to perform there in 1951. She remained with the Met through 1955, appearing in productions including Aida and Carmen. Following her performing career at the Met, Collins taught modern dance at the School of American Ballet, founded by George Balanchine, and at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City from 1951 until 1972. In 1974 she retired from both performing and teaching, turning her attention to her Catholic faith and her work as a Benedictine oblate. She was also a painter.

Collins received a Candace Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women in 1989. In 1974, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater honored her alongside Pearl Primus as a pioneering Black woman in dance. In 2000, in declining health, she relocated from Seattle to Fort Worth, Texas, to be near her brother, Ernest Patrick Collins. She died in Fort Worth on May 28, 2003, at the age of 86, and was survived by her brother and her sister, Betty Wilkerson of Pasadena, California. In 2007, her cousin, dancer Carmen De Lavallade, established the Janet Collins Fellowship to support aspiring ballet dancers in her memory.