Portraits by John Berger

Author:John Berger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

Degas, Two Dancers at Rest, 1898

The dark folds or fissures in these images express the solitude being felt by a part of a limb or torso, which is accustomed to company, to being touched by fellow parts, but which when dancing has to go it alone. The darknesses express the pain of such a disconjuncture and the endurance necessary for bridging it imaginatively. Hence the grace and the starkness to which Baudelaire referred when he said ‘gracious and terrible’.

Now look at Degas’s studies of dancers who are taking a brief rest, particularly those he made towards the end of his life. They are among the most paradisiacal images I know, yet they are far from the Garden of Eden. While resting, the dancers’ limbs are reunited. An arm reposes along the whole length of a leg. A hand refinds a foot to touch it, the fingers matching each toe. Their multiple solitudes are for a moment over. A chin rests on a knee. Contiguity is blissfully re-established. Often their eyes are half-closed and their faces look bland, as if recalling a transcendence.

The transcendence they are remembering is the aim of the art of dancing: the aim of a dancer’s entire wracked body to become one with the music. What is astounding is that Degas’s images capture this experience silently. With folds but without sound.

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