The idea of creating a ballet came to Brigitte Lefèvre, the Ballet’s dance director, after reading Martine Kahane’s research. Though numerous exhibitions, books and films had already been dedicated to Degas and dance, until then, no choreographic work had ever really done so. The project, entrusted to choreographer Patrice Bart and composer Denis Levaillant, took form around a central idea: to translate the intrinsic modernity of a 19thcentury story into music and the language of the stage. From a mere investigation, the ballet became a quest to recreate the imaginative world of classical dance through the works of Degas.

The story was nothing less than the starting point for a wider exploration of the wings of the Paris Opera, a place infused with memories that do so much to evoke the troubling proximity between effort and performance, between the sublime and the shameful, to which Degas’ work remains the perfect testimony.