Night's Dancer: The Life of Janet Collins

by Yael Tamar Lewin and Janet Collins

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Book cover for Night's Dancer

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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 Yael 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.
  • ISBN10 0819571156
  • ISBN13 9780819571151
  • Publish Date 13 September 2011
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Publisher University Press of New England
  • Imprint Wesleyan University Press
  • Format eBook
  • Pages 384
  • Language English