Like this dancer, Degas‘s pictures of the ballet hover precariously between the magic of the footlights and the realities of life backstage. We watch this performance in close-up, either through a pair of opera glasses or from the wings, to which Degas, an elite subscriber at the Paris Opera, enjoyed access. The dancer's pose suggests movement, cannot be sustained for more than a second or two at a time; His model for this figure could be Melina Darde, a teenage member of the Corps de Ballet transformed, by the artist's imagination, into a glimmering, gaslit star.