2/17/2023 0 Comments Paris operaThe Paris Opéra was the official school of the first state-supported ballet, the Académie Royale de Danse, created in 1661. The central dancer is in fifth position, en pointe, but the random placement of the corps de ballet, with the dancers’ free-flowing hair, suggests a rehearsal rather than a performance. The view is from the orchestra pit, with the necks of the double basses intruding into the dancers’ zone. This work, executed on one of the widest monotype plates ever used by the artist, bears Degas’s characteristically cropped forms and odd vantage points, which effectively convey the immediacy of the scene. Described as “the powder of butterfly wings,” pastel was the perfect medium to illustrate the onstage metamorphosis of spindly young dancers into visions of beauty as perfect and short-lived as butterflies. In Ballet at the Paris Opéra, the artist creatively joined the monotype technique, rarely used in his time, with the fragile medium of pastel. One of the nineteenth century’s most innovative artists, Edgar Degas often combined traditional techniques in unorthodox ways.
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