Modern Life and the Ballet

Degas made roughly fifteen hundred works related to dance, concentrating less on finished spectacle than on rehearsal, waiting, fatigue, adjustment, and disciplined movement. The Paris Opéra offered repeated poses and an institutional world behind performance.

These images are formally inventive but also shaped by unequal relations among dancers, patrons, and the male observer. Their beauty should not erase the labor and vulnerability of the young women depicted.