My daughter just finished up her annual recital and performance group show last weekend. So I have had dancers on the brain all month long! One of the dances this year included about 25 dancers, aged 7-17, all wearing powder pink table-top tutus. It was stunning!
“People call me the painter of dancing girls,” Degas told Paris art dealer Ambroise Vollard. “It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.”
“People
call me the painter of dancing girls,” Degas later told Paris art
dealer Ambroise Vollard. “It has never occurred to them that my chief
interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty
clothes.”Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/degas-and-his-dancers-79455990/#FPwHYfKJ7FPGyv7Y.99
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Degas was smitten with the Paris Opera Ballet. He lurked in the hallways and practice rooms. He gained backstage access by pressing for favors from the rich male patrons of the ballet, the abonnés, which allowed him into the private world. He painted the aspiring ballerinas in the most mundane moments, in poses that were more relaxed, from intriguing angles, and less in the spotlight. These are the most enduring images of the 18th century that he left us with all these centuries later. Yet, they feel timeless. And having just come from a full weekend of dance performances, I can tell you that they are spot on.
