Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer

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!