Artist: Edgar Degas
Country: French
Year: 1834-1917
Title: Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, 1880
Materials: Bronze, Gauze, + Satin Ribbon; Height 97.6 cm.
Place: The Saint Louis Art Museum
Reason: Gift of Mrs. Mark C. Steinberg
This girl was fourteen years old, and was a French dancer In 1880. She worked hard to become the dancer she was. She’s thinking about how she can change her dancing skills because she messed up in the dance studio and is upset.
Just to dance--
just to let the music take you
in a way that seems to make you
feel suspended everytime you leave the floor...
Just to soar--
in a moment free and aerial
to rise magically ethereal,
like an angel in a gossamery swirl...
Just to whirl--
and to nimbly pirouette
into a twirling silhouette,
high on pointe, with muscles taut down to your
toes...
Just to pose--
with body sculpted, statuesque,
to excute an arabesque,
and with fragile, artful grace sustain your
stance...
Just to prance--
to step in flawless syncopation
with the corps in tight formation,
marking time with every heartbeat, every turn...
Just to yearn--
to be poetry in motion,
and, with disciplined devotion,
to create a thing of beauty and romance...
Just to dance!