The solution was provided by Guillaume Bort at the playframework google group.
I forgot to add javaCore as a dependency for my application after updating Build.scala. You have to explicitly add javaCore as a dependency in 2.1.
val appDependencies = Seq(
javaCore
)
And remember to start using play.Project instead of PlayProject:
val main = play.Project(appName, appVersion, appDependencies).settings(
// Add your own project settings here
)