Price: £12.95
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
Genre: Non Fiction
Age Range: 10-14 Middle/Secondary
Length: 32pp
- In association with: American Federation of Arts and the School of American Ballet
Degas and the Dance: The Painter and the Petits Rats, Perfecting Their Art
The author’s interest in and commitment to dance led to her study of the work of Edgar Degas, the painter who brought to life the efforts of young ballet dancers at the Paris Opera in perfecting their skills. The resulting book has much to offer both aspiring dancers and young people with more than a superficial interest in drawing and painting. Indeed the book affirms Degas’ belief that learning to dance and learning to paint both require exceptional effort and investment of time. Just as the dancers repeated the same positions again and again – so Degas drew the same poses again and again.
There were many examinations and dancers were ruthlessly rejected if they failed to meet the exacting standards. Two of the plates show Degas’ paintings of the nerve-wracking moments before the test – Dance Examination (1880) and Waiting (1882). The author comments ‘Degas noticed everything – he understood the ballerinas’ jitters … but he also captured the thrill of a successful performance.’ The book will have particular appeal for young enthusiasts in the 11-14 age range, but it will also be of considerable interest to some younger and older readers. The high quality illustrations alone, thirty reproductions of Degas’ work in oil, pastel and pencil, make this a book worth owning. But there is much in the text too for aspiring dancers; the story of the lives of the ‘petits rats’ – the very young dancers practising day after day at their rond de jambe, frappé, attitude and arabesque – makes us marvel at their determination and dedication. And for children interested in the way an artist sets about making marks and building a painting using different methods and techniques this will be a fascinating read. For Degas, pastel was ‘the powder of a butterfly’s wings’; sometimes he bleached his paintings in sunlight to soften the colours or even blew steam over the paper to make the drawing ‘look smeared’.
We also get a strong sense of the sort of person Degas was: the author makes clear the artist’s human sympathy and respect for the young dancers (‘most of them are poor girls doing a very demanding job’), his endearing untidiness in his studio and his enjoyment of singing arias from his favourite operas while he painted. The many direct quotations add energy to the text. ‘Drawing is not what one sees, but what one can make others see’ reflected Degas. The two-page biography of the artist and the bibliography encourage further research.