The Dance Class

The Dance Class shows ballet dancers rehearsing under the watchful eye of the renowned instructor Jules Perrot. Edgar Degas’s unconventional composition — with its cropped figures, off-centre focal point, and emphasis on unguarded moments of stretching, adjusting, and fatigue — reveals the discipline and strain behind the grace, making it one of the most penetrating studies of the ballet ever painted. The painting is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.