Word: ballets
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...though. Degas' was a classicism with a difference, and that difference was a caustic, often cruel, streak of irony. A few pieces in particular demonstrate this world-view. The first constitute a procession of "grands arabesques"--the term is used here in its technical sense, to mean a specific ballet position that dancers must do in three steps. They move from a relaxed stance with the left foot held out backward and the arms comfortably outstretched, to a tense bird-in-flight position calling to mind Rolls-Royce hood ornaments; the left leg poised back and up above the line...
...piece of work in the medium. His biting humor becomes manifest in "The Little14-Year-Old Dancer," of which both the finished product and a study in the nude take their places in the exhibit. The nude study highlights the ironic contrast between the elegant, flowing pose the young ballet student has struck (her neck imperiously thrust back and her arms joined together in a graceful arc behind her back) and the jutting angularity of her prepubescent body...
...skinny shoulders, puffed-up belly and knobby knees, she nonetheless assumes her delicate ballet posture with self-assurance--more than that, in fact, as across her upturned nose she peers out at the world through haughtily squinting eyes. (She looks as if she were reluctantly holding her breath to avoid taking in a disagreeable smell.) Top this off in the final version with a frowsy, faded vest, a hair ribbon out of place on her gangly frame, and a ragged tutu, and the arrogance of her carriage becomes all the more laughable...
...fluid presence of a ballerina, rests entirely on his long study and thorough mastery of the possibilities inherent in the subjects to which he devoted himself. In the period that spawned his most successful and intellectually challenging work, he spent years on end in the practicing rooms where the ballet "rats" (girls, often from the slums of Paris, who devoted their young lives entirely to dance) limbered up and rehearsed...
This scrupulous examination of both physique and pose (many of the dancer pieces simply bear the name of the ballet position the subject is striking) pays off in some of the more original statuettes in the exhibit. In one series, "Dancer Fastening the String of Her Tights," Degas enlists his intimate knowledge of the graceful "arabesques" (here again meaning "pattern of lines") to ingeniously turn on its head the wit of his voyeuristic studies of women doing their toilette. While this particular task might conjure up a singularly awkward and unattractive image, Degas transforms it into a pleasing, fluid pose...