Edgar Degas - The Dance Class Notebook

The Dance Class (La Classe de danse), painted between 1873 and 1876 in oil on canvas by French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas. The class is ending, and the dancers stretch, scratch, adjust ribbons and clothing, or simply relax while ballet master Jules Perrot stands among them with his staff. A slightly raised viewpoint and the long diagonal lines of the wooden floor give unusual importance to the rehearsal space itself. Degas preferred these unguarded pauses to the polished spectacle of performance, repeatedly studying the small gestures that appear when concentration breaks after hard training. He later admitted that he had invented many dance-examination scenes before actually seeing such an examination, evidence of how carefully constructed these apparently spontaneous interiors could be.