About the original:
Auguste Rodin tried to capture the essence of the body in movement.
Unlike Degas, who obviously comes to mind when looking at this series, classical ballet did not much interest Rodin who found it stilted and conventional. He was more interested in different forms of dance which he considered to be more authentic or more modern: such as the dances of King Sisowath of Cambodia’s dancers, but also Louis Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Nijinsky and French Cancan dancers.
Alda Moreno, as dancer at the Opera Comique, was introduced to Rodin by Desbois in July 1910. He was fascinated by her suppleness and wanted to get her to pose immediately. But she was away for the summer and Desbois had to reassure Rodin: “You will see her as soon as she gets back and you will be able to make as many works of her as you like.” And a little later: “The little model has come back and is completely at your service.” The young women then posed for Rodin who made about 50 line drawings of her in pencil shaded with a stump.
These daring attitudes seem to deny the joints to the point of verging on awkwardness since Rodin, like Picasso in The Acrobat (1930, Paris, Picasso Museum), takes no account of traditional anatomy. They appear in the extremely homogeneous Dance Movement series and for which Rodin therefore very probably used Moreno, even though they received the head of the Salv women, modeled more than fifteen years before.
