Night's dancer : the life of Janet Collins

cover image

Where to find it

Davis Library (5th floor)

Call Number
GV1785.C635 L48 2011
Status
Available

Stone Center Library

Call Number
GV1785.C635 L48 2011
Status
Available

Authors, etc.

Names:

Summary

The biography of the first African-American prima ballerina

Winner of the The Marfield Prize / National Award for Arts Writing (2011)

Dancer Janet Collins, born in New Orleans in 1917 and raised in Los Angeles, soared high over the color line as the first African-American prima ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera. Night's Dancer chronicles the life of this extraordinary and elusive woman, who became a unique concert dance soloist as well as a black trailblazer in the white world of classical ballet. During her career, Collins endured an era in which racial bias prevailed, and subsequently prevented her from appearing in the South. Nonetheless, her brilliant performances transformed the way black dancers were viewed in ballet. The book begins with an unfinished memoir written by Collins in which she gives a captivating account of her childhood and young adult years, including her rejection by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Dance scholar Yaël Tamar Lewin then picks up the thread of Collins's story. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with Collins and her family, friends, and colleagues to explore Collins's development as a dancer, choreographer, and painter, Lewin gives us a profoundly moving portrait of an artist of indomitable spirit.

Contents

  • List of Illustrations
  • Prologue Yael Tamar Lewin
  • Foreword Janet Collins
  • Act 1 by Janet Collins
  • In the Beginning
  • About Art
  • Intermission
  • Act 2 Modern a la Mode
  • Creation
  • Exodus East
  • Out of This World
  • Enter Egypt
  • The Trouble I've Seen
  • Eye of the Storm
  • Epilogue
  • Acknowledgments
  • Chronology
  • Appendixes
  • Genesis "Argument" by Janet Collins
  • Black Dancers in Ballet
  • Notes
  • Selected Bibliography
  • Index
  • Color plates follow pages 172 and 268

Other details