Frieze of Dancers

Degas arranged his ballerinas in a rhythmic frieze across the stage, dissolving the boundary between painting and sculpture. The dancers’ diaphanous skirts and mirrored repetitions evoke the ephemeral spectacle of the Paris Opéra ballet, a subject Degas returned to throughout his career.
The painting is now in the Cleveland Museum of Art (accession 1946.83), gift of the Hanna Fund.