It turned out that Degas’ model was a street urchin, one of the “opera rats” who joined the Paris Opera Ballet as a way out of poverty. Stroman was eager to brainstorm with them about her “wow” idea, but she told me that before she could say a word, Ahrens burst out, “We should do a show based on Little Dancer!” Clearly, it was meant to be.īoyd Gaines as Edgar Degas and Tiler Peck as Young Marie Ahrens and Flaherty are best-known for their legendary musical Ragtime, which won the Tony Award for Best Score in 1998. When she returned to New York, Stroman met with lyricist Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty. The young girl is posed in a relaxed version of ballet’s fourth position, but there was something about her attitude-the thrust of her chin, the way she held her body-that made Stroman want to know more. Stroman told me that the idea struck her when she was in Paris and saw Little Dancer, captured in bronze, at the Musee d’Orsay. with aspirations of heading to Broadway in 2015. Now, however, the sculpture has been reimagined into a musical theater spectacle, directed and choreographed by five-time Tony Award winner Susan Stroman the all-singing, all-dancing production opened October 25 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. In the face of rampant public disapproval, Degas removed the sculpture from display and stored it in a closet, where it resided in anonymity for the next four decades until financier Paul Mellon acquired the original wax sculpture in 1956 and gifted it to the National Gallery of Art in 1985. Moreover, instead of chiseling her nobly in marble, he had rendered her in beeswax and found objects. The public, accustomed to sculptures that showcased idealized women in marble, was outraged that Degas’s work depicted such a common subject-a young dancer drawn from everyday life and whose attitude reflected nothing goddess-like or heroic. His intention was to portray a young girl who dreamed of having an “illustrious life” in ballet, but who also kept “her identity as a girl from the streets of Paris.” Edgar Degas created a sensation when he presented his Little Dancer sculpture at the Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1881.
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