“Janet Collins, prima ballerina of the Metropolitan Opera House in the early 1950’s and one of a very few black women to become prominent in American classical ballet, died on Wednesday in Fort Worth. She was 86.” Critic John Martin once wrote of her, “She is not self-absorbed, but is dancing completely and wholesouledly for an audience. On the other hand, there is no air of showing off about it, no coyness or coquetry, but only an apparent desire to establish and maintain a communicative contact.”