A Camera's Eye Backstage: Degas's The Dance Class

Degas painted ballet dancers obsessively — they were, in fact, his favorite subject by far. But what drew him wasn't the glamour of dancers performing onstage; it was moments like this one, glimpses of rehearsal and backstage life.

The scene captures the end of a practice session, with the dancers gathered around their instructor for final notes. The elderly man leaning on a cane at the center is Jules Perrot, a renowned choreographer of the era who had also been a celebrated dancer in his youth, and a personal acquaintance of Degas. The dancers surrounding him don't look especially attentive — some stretch, some sit resting, each in her own loose, unguarded pose, and the varied colors of the ribbons tied at their waists give the whole scene a sense of liveliness.

The composition itself is worth noting too. Degas painted only one wall of the studio, not the whole room, and the result looks almost like a photograph snapped at random from where he was standing — figures and objects are cropped unexpectedly at the edges of the canvas. The floorboards, too, stretch diagonally across the room, narrowing toward the left, reinforcing a strong sense of depth and distance.

A nearly identical composition exists under the title The Dance Class, held at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. According to one account, Degas set this painting aside for a time in the late 19th century in order to debut the Metropolitan's version first — a stroke of luck for us, since this canvas survived intact and remains on view today.