Edgar Degas: Dancers in the Classroom

Dancers in the Classroom, Edgar Degas, c. 1880, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Paris, c. 1880. The lesson is in full swing. In the rehearsal room, bodies stretch, adjust, catch their breath. Degas watches. His eye takes in everything: the grace, the effort, the instant suspended between two exercises.

The Studio as a Scene of Life

The gaze slides across an empty floor, vast, almost vertiginous. Degas chooses a boldly horizontal composition. On the left, dancers work at the barre, arms raised, backs taut. At the centre, a ballerina holds a red-and-blue fan, her head tilted back. On the right, two dancers rest on a red bench. One of them adjusts her stocking with casual indifference. The handling is light, trembling. The tutus dissolve in the light from the tall windows. The plunging perspective unsettles, draws the viewer in. One enters the painting.

Nine Revisions for a Single Leg

In the late 1870s, Edgar Degas undertook a series of large horizontal canvases devoted to the rehearsal rooms of the Paris Opéra. These works upended the representation of dance. Gone was the idealised spectacle: Degas shows the labour, the fatigue, the concentration. The composition is the fruit of painstaking work. The position of the outstretched leg of the dancer adjusting her stocking was reworked at least nine times. Impressionism here is not spontaneous: it is constructed, weighed, corrected.

Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) was one of the leading figures of the Impressionist movement, of which he was a close companion, though he always set himself apart through his commitment to drawing and composition. Fascinated by movement and artificial light, he made dance his territory of predilection. His ballerinas, far from being icons, are working women.

A Question for You

💭 Look at that empty floor occupying nearly half the canvas. Why does Degas leave so much room for emptiness? What does that silence say about the world of dance?