While artist Edgar Degas is known for his depictions of ballet dancers, his lesser known images of folk dancers portray an energy and tone of celebration that is not seen in his other works. Russian Dancers is a pastel drawing, one of the fifteen works he created of Eastern European folk dancers. The figures of three young women appear to be in the midst of performing a traditional dance. They are dressed in costumes imitating the clothes of traditional Russian villagers, which includes white blouses, colorful and embroidered skirts, and red boots. They also are depicted wearing floral crowns and necklaces. Degas captures the fast paced movements of the dancer by blurring the figures’ facial features. Their limbs and clothing are more defined though, outlined by a thin dark line. The use of a dark line is an unusual element in an Impressionist work since artist associated with the movement preferred to use light and shadow to convey shapes as opposed to outlining. The hazy yellow sky adds the impression that this dance is occurring around sunset. The bright reds, purples, blues, and greens of the dancer’s skirts pop against the shadowy, greyish-green hills of the background. By keeping the background design simple and the color mostly monotone, Degas emphasizes the dancers as the focus of the work. Notice how the artist also added the same colors in the skirts to the hill in the background. This effectively ties the dancers and their surroundings into one harmonious composition.
The bright skirts themselves create a lot of contrast in the work of art by emphasizing the movement and rhythmic energy that leads the viewer’s eye from figure to figure. The purple skirt pops against the blue which pops against the green, layering on the excitement of the dance. None of the dancers stand straight up or are in stiff poses. They are holding their hands up to their heads with elbows out to the side with their knees raised to try and touch their elbows. To achieve these poses, Degas depicts the dancers on diagonal lines across the composition that contrast with the horizontal lines of the background, creating a more lively and dynamic image. Not only are the figures drawn on diagonals, but they also appear to be slightly off balance as a means to illustrate the energetic pace of the dance and its ever-changing movements.
Degas crafted Russian Dancers similarly to how he approached his famous works of art of ballet dancers. He not only attended performances from various troupes, but would also ask the dancers to come to his studio so he could sketch them in great detail. He used tracing paper for each sketch so he could later layer the different poses together to form a final composition. From there, he would use pastels to create the vivid colors of the finished work of art. Degas called his pastel works “orgies of color” for their liveliness and brightness of the pastels as opposed to oil paints.
Interestingly, Degas never visited Russia in his lifetime. An obsession with Eastern European culture had swept through Paris after France and Russia signed a treaty in the 1890s to protect each other from the triple alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. The cultural obsession led to many Russian folk dance troupes visiting Paris around the turn of the century. Degas watched these folk dancers in their performances at cabarets and clubs around Paris. As a result, the countryside he uses for the backgrounds for his folk dancers are not real, but from his imagination.
While Degas depicted the dancers and ballerinas in similar manners, in reality, folk dance depicted is a far cry from ballet. Where ballerinas were trained for years to perform on stage in ornate costumes with elaborate sets, traditional folk dancers tended to be people of the working classes who danced for ritual purposes or their own entertainment. Folk dance practices originated as early as 3000 BCE as a part of ritual worship and often incorporated musical instruments, singing, and spoken word. When Christian missionaries swept through Russia during the Middle Ages, they saw how ingrained the dances were in the culture and incorporated Christian themes into them instead of trying to remove them. By the 18th century, folk dances were beginning to move from a traditional part of culture to a performance art. By the time Degas was watching them at the turn of the 20th century, they were just performances that represented an idealized version of agrarian life in Russia.
Although Degas did not consider himself an Impressionist because he did not use most of their painting techniques or exact styles, he still exhibited with them and focused on similar subjects as them, people and events of everyday life as opposed to the aristocracy.
