February 18, 2005

This is a picture that’s been fascinating me lately. Degas sketched it in pastel on a piece of blue paper in 1884, and what I like about it is its slight but unmistakable creepiness. I’m particularly interested in the effect of stagelight, coming from below (probably some kind of gas light in those days) which throws the upper part of the girl’s face into shadow. The cheap finery of her costume blended with the youthful scrawniness of her face and figure conjures up a strong emotional response in me, one I’d like to elicit in my own work.

One of the things I wonder about is how much the public really understands about the nature of Degas’ pictures of dancing girls and singers. Today, ballet is an elite sport—those that win places in companies like the New York City Ballet are usually the daughters of upper-middle-class parents, who have the resources and wherewithal to choose any life they want, and who select the art of ballet as their means of self-expression. The dancing girls of Degas’ time were from the working class—girls who had run away, or been thrown out, and had to make their way in the world. Having a bit of gumption and a saucy look was probably more valuable in securing a position on stage than talent or experience. And, of course, willingness to don a scanty costume was essential.

Although Degas’ singer’s costume looks sweet and wholesome enough to those of us used to crop tops and low-rise jeans, one has to remember that respectable women of the time were cinched with whalebone and swathed in bombazine skirts that required twenty yards of material to construct. The scrawny little singer’s outfit was tantamount to nudity, and that combined with her presence on stage was enough to brand her a prostitute in the eyes of the world. Soon enough some man would come along and prove the world right; very few dancers and singers lived as chastely as Gaston Leroux’s Christine Daae. A great man had the star of the Opera as his lover, while a artisan might draw his lovers (and his models) from the corps de ballet. If Degas’ singer wasn’t a courtesan at the time he sketched her, she became one soon enough. Having already left any vestige of respectability behind her as she stepped on stage, it was only natural (and practical) to accept such offers as would inevitably come her way. Why be lonely when she could have company, at least for a little while?

One imagines Degas’ singer thrilling to the still-new sound of applause, green with excitement over her first solo part, still sure that somehow there will be a happy ending to this grand adventure of hers. The juxtaposition of a youthful and somewhat naive subject with the eerie and dissonant lighting of her face and arms is striking but at the same time harsh and unnatural—not unlike the theater life.