Degas’s Ballet Students Teach the Lessons of Their Art
Librado Romero/The New York Times
Visitors with “The Little 14-Year-Old Dancer,” a bronze by Edgar Degas, from about 1880, at the Metropolitan Museum. The galleries have two depictions of her. More Photos>
In 1955 the art historian Kenneth Clark was visiting a museum in Copenhagen with Ninette de Valois, the artistic director of the Royal Ballet in Britain and the main architect of its style in the classroom. “How beautiful, “ Clark remarked as they were looking at paintings and statues of dancers by Degas. Soon he became aware of a severe expression on de Valois’s face. Then she said, disapprovingly, “Line!”
That story returned to mind as I recently viewed the endlessly absorbing Degas ballet paintings and sculptures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Even if you’ve been looking at Degas ballet pictures for decades, it remains astonishing how few of his dancers are actually dancing. The rest are stretching, adjusting ribbons and costumes, waiting in the wings, resting, gossiping or watching what performing there is.
By contrast, in Degas’s 1890s paintings of Russian folk dancers, you can’t miss that these women are all dancing. Their long sleeves and boots (Degas called this series “orgies of color”) are another world from the Paris Opera ballet he had been depicting since 1870. (The Met has just one Russian dancer, from 1899.)
The ballet pictures feature remarkably little pointwork. Even when it occurs, Degas sometimes obscures it. In “The Dance Class” (1874), a single dancer is stepping onto point in attitude. Yet we can’t quite see the clinching detail of her toe, for the tulle of another performer’s skirt blocks our view.
The proportion of dance content is higher in the room of Degas statues, which contains 25 bronzes of dancers. Most, interestingly, show models in the nude. And three depict women doing the same arabesque penchée; each might have caused de Valois to exclaim, “Line!”