Dance Class at the Opera

White tutus, yellow-ochre walls, a ballet master tapping time with his cane. In a canvas barely larger than a sheet of paper, Degas opened a whole rehearsal room at the Paris Opera around 1872.

The story behind the painting

Degas painted this small canvas, about 32.7 by 46.3 cm, around 1872. Its French title places it in the dance foyer of the Opera on the rue Le Peletier. He chose a precise moment in the lesson: the dancers have finished their exercises at the barre and are beginning, one by one, their work in the centre of the room. The scene is not a performance but the daily routine of a class, with a teacher, a musician and young dancers waiting their turn.

What to look for

On the left, Mademoiselle Hughes prepares to perform her exercise. On the right stands the ballet master Louis-Alexandre Mérante, dressed in white, leaning on a cane with which he marks the rhythm and corrects movements, his hand raised to ask the dancer for more restraint. Beside him a violinist sits at a music stand. Look also at the seated dancer next to the master, her face slightly in shadow, drawn with particular precision, and at the girls at the barre along the back wall, each in a different pose, one simply resting.

Meaning and intent

The composition is arranged around a large empty space in the middle of the floor, with the figures placed around it. Mirrors reflecting other scenes and an open doorway make the room seem larger still. Light comes from the right, where a window may be assumed, and the contours of the figures are softened to catch the atmosphere. Yet Degas keeps a firmer base in drawing than the Impressionists. The violinist's dark clothes and heavy figure deliberately break the harmony of white tutus and pale walls.

Legacy

The painting belongs to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Its source describes the scene as especially idyllic and delicate, and the whole room seems to breathe between two exercises: the dancers waiting, practising, resting, while the master gives his last advice before the next step. It shows the world Degas returned to again and again, not the ballet as audiences saw it, but the patient work behind it, kept here in a modest canvas that invites a slow look at every corner.