Degas at the Opéra, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, 1878-1881

KIMBERLY JONES: //Little Dancer Aged Fourteen is an icon, pure and simple. It is one of the most famous sculptures in the world. There are at least 25 posthumous reproductions of this sculpture, but here we have the original. KAYWIN FELDMAN: It’s made of beeswax over a metal frame. Degas gave this dancer a cotton bodice, a cotton and silk tutu, and linen slippers. Her human hair is tied back with a silk and linen ribbon. She rests on a wooden base in fourth position with her hands clasped behind her back so as not to flatten her tutu. JULIE KENT: She’s thinking, she’s listening, she’s resting. And then she’s about to repeat it all, dance again. //She’s taking it all in, and then you can tell, like in five beats from now, she’s gonna close to fifth, plié and start dancing again. KAYWIN FELDMAN: The model is Marie van Goethem. She was known as one of the “little rats of the Opéra” a derogatory term used to describe the many young, working-class students in the dance school at the Paris Opéra. The teenager defiantly holds her head high, chin up. KIMBERLY JONES: You get the sense of this prepubescent body, the slightly knobby knees, the long, attenuated arms, the thinness and frailty of her body. KAYWIN FELDMAN: Soon after the sculpture was exhibited in 1881, Marie was expelled from the dance school for missing too many practices, and little is known of her life afterward. KIMBERLY JONES: In some ways, //who she is has been obscured. She is less Marie van Goethem, ballet rat, and more aspiring young dance student. She’s become something more symbolic, someone who is no longer tied to her biography, and has become something more. KAYWIN FELDMAN: For nineteenth-century critics, this sculpture looked too real, even ugly. They weren’t used to seeing sculpture that looked so lifelike, that wasn’t made out of durable materials like bronze or marble... Today that is what is most appealing. We recognize something authentic in her. KIMBERLY JONES: And that ultimately was what Degas was most after, the authenticity of the experience is much more important than the details. //Each and every image feels right. KAWYIN: And let’s have a dancer give us a final thought. JULIE KENT: I find it very inspiring. I see young ladies like this every day. But she’s there for the world to sort of acknowledge. And inspire. //She’d be a great spokesperson for us.