Universalizing the Specific: Janet Collins’s Spirituals and Genesis

Abstract

African American modern dancer and ballerina Janet Collins challenged conventions for representing race, gender, and religion in her Spirituals suite (1947) and Genesis (1965), works that brought together Jewish and African American spiritualities. Countering the assumption that only white dancers access the privilege to present themselves in universalizing ways, I argue that Collins used a process of self-universalization. This article shows how Collins employed dance techniques and thematic content usually coded as white to highlight the spiritual experiences of Black women and to circumvent assignations of “Negro dance” that would have failed to encompass her technical range and subject position.