March 7
Born Today:
Janet Collins
Cousin of modern dancer Carmen de Lavallade (1931-), ballerina Janet Collins (1917-2003) also studied with modern dancer Lester Horton (1906-1953) and with ballet dancer Adolph Bolm (1884-1951) - two of a very few teachers who would accept black students at the time. Collins was accepted to dance with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, but she refused to paint her skin lighter and declined to perform with the company. Instead she performed with Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) for a time. After seeing her performance on Broadway in Out of This World (1950), Collins was invited to perform for the Metropolitan Opera ballet, the first black ballerina to do so. She taught at the School of American Ballet and at Marymount Manhattan College for two decades and retired from teaching and dancing in the mid-1970s.
Also Born Today: Proponent of the Delsarte system of expressive movement, Genevieve Stebbins (1857-1934) developed Harmonic Gymnastics, a movement method designed to give young women a creative outlet for physical exercise. Dancer Myra Chouteau (1929-2016) was one of the Five Moons, a group of Native-American ballerinas from Oklahoma. She founded the dance program at the University of Oklahoma in 1962. American modern dancer, Carolyn Carlson (1943-) has created work in Europe for several decades. Choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler (1970-) created dances for the blockbuster Broadway hit, Hamilton (2015) .