Professor Butter Beard and Edgar Degas’ “Dancer with a Bouquet of Flowers”
“But everything was beautiful at the ballet
Graceful men lift lovely girls in white
Yes, everything was beautiful at the ballet
I was happy... at the ballet.”
- Marvin Hamlisch, “At the Ballet” from “A Chorus Line”
We all have “that song.” The song that will immediately inspire full voice, no matter what the surroundings or happening: driving on the Parkway, vacuuming the living room, lounging in a bubble bath, or even strolling with Nellie. I have a few. Genesis’ “Misunderstanding.” Supertramp’s “The Logical Song.” “New Music” from Ragtime. And, every time I hear it, “At the Ballet” from A Chorus Line. Now if I could only figure how to break out into three-part harmony. I must work with Nellie and find her a new vocal coach.
At the ballet, according to Mr. Hamlisch, “everything was beautiful.” I must admit that I am still developing my appreciation of “visual poetry,” but I feel myself edging closer to an understanding, especially when observing and preparing to teach modern art to my latest group of college freshmen.
One of the truest admirers of the ballet and its dancers was the painter Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, better known as Edgar Degas, the French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings. Degas was born in 1834, in Paris, France, into a moderately wealthy family and began to paint very early in his life. In 1862, while copying a Velázquez at the Louvre, Degas met the artist Édouard Manet, who drew him into the inner circle of the avant-garde Impressionist painters working in the bohemian district of Montmartre. It was in part due to Manet’s influence that Degas turned to subjects from contemporary life, including café scenes, the theater and dance.
Degas rented a studio and an apartment in Montmartre, where he lived and worked most of his life. It was a quarter of artists’ studios and cabarets, the well-off and the poor, washerwomen and prostitutes. His neighbors over the years included Renoir, Gustave Moreau (later Matisse’s teacher), Toulouse-Lautrec, Mary Cassatt and van Gogh, as well as musicians, dancers and other artists who worked at the Paris Opéra and its ballet.
Paul Trachtman writes, that “at the ballet, Degas found a world that excited both his taste for classical beauty and his eye for modern realism. He haunted the wings and classrooms of the magnificent Palais Garnier, home of the Paris Opéra and its Ballet, where some of the city’s poorest young girls struggled to become the fairies, nymphs and queens of the stage.” As Degas became part of this world of pink and white, so full of tradition, he invented new techniques for drawing and painting it. According to Trachtman, “Degas claimed the ballet for modern art just as Cézanne was claiming the landscape.”
“People call me the painter of dancing girls," Degas once explained to Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard. “It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.” Like his fellow French artists, he employed quick brushstrokes and used vivid color in his pastels and paintings. But, unlike other Impressionists, Degas was not preoccupied with light and nature. Instead, he was fascinated by movement and people—making ballerinas his ideal subject.
And one particular dancer who caught the artist’s eye was the Spanish principal ballerina María Isabel Amada Antonia Rosa Mauri Segura (Rosita Mauri). Throughout her career, she was frequently portrayed by artists. Edgar Degas captured her dancer’s soul several times including this week’s featured pastel, “Dancer with a Bouquet of Flowers.” She was also painted by Manet, Renoir, Léon Bonnat, Léon Comerre, Anders Zorn and Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic, and sculpted by Denys Puech, Laurent Marqueste, and Eusebi Arnau. Nadar even considered her a personal muse and photographed her often throughout her career.
Degas’s contemporaries often wrote of their encounters with the painter, sculptor, and later, the photographer. “Yesterday I spent the whole day in the studio of a strange painter called Degas,” the Parisian man of letters Edmond de Goncourt wrote in his diary in 1874. “Out of all the subjects in modern life he has chosen washerwomen and ballet dancers . . . it is a world of pink and white . . . the most delightful of pretexts for using pale, soft tints.”
And the French historian, Daniel Halévy, described Degas’ creations as a “depoetization” of life, “a fascination with the simplest, most intimate, least beautiful gestures— ballerinas stretching at the bar, practicing positions, waiting in the wings, taking instruction, scratching themselves, tying their shoes, adjusting their tutus, rubbing sore muscles, fixing their hair, fanning, talking, flirting, daydreaming, and doing almost everything but dancing.”
Art historians almost unanimously agree that Degas’s pictures of ballerinas convey exquisitely what makes ballet ballet—all that balance, grace and radiance combining to create “mimed poetry, dream made visible.” Degas himself explained, “In art, nothing should look like chance, not even movement.”
Degas’ ballerinas, and particularly Rosita Mauri, bowing to the admiring crowds in her white tutu that sparkles gold in the theater lights and clutching a fragrant bouquet of pink roses, inspired these lighter-than-air almond macarons, filled with an aromatic vanilla bean buttercream and sprinkled with a dance of pastel nonpareils. I actually filled lavender-colored bags with the fresh macarons and a few token Belgian chocolates and gave them to the neighborhood children early on this Easter morning. Seeing their “just awake” faces burst into radiant smiles as they took their first bite made my heart dance and sing. And yes, it was the second chorus of “At the Ballet.”
“Tutu” Macarons
Makes about 30 macarons
2 ¼ cups almond flour (I use Bob’s Red Mill)
1 ¾ cup confectioner’s sugar
6 large egg whites, room temperature
2 tsp vanilla paste
1 tsp nut extract – either hazelnut or almond
Dash of fine sea salt
1 ¼ cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup water
2 tsp vanilla paste
Rainbow nonpareils, for sprinkling
2 cups filling – either a Swiss Meringue Buttercream or White Chocolate Ganache
1) Line three baking sheets with parchment paper. On the underside of the paper, draw 1 ½” circles, spaced at least 1” apart, to use as a template for your macarons. Draw no more than twenty per baking sheet.
2) In a food processor, pulse the almond flour and confectioner’s sugar together until finely ground and fully combined.
3) Transfer the flour/sugar to a large bowl and fold in three of the egg whites, the dash of fine sea salt, nut extract and vanilla paste. Fold until completely combined.
4) In a small saucepan, stir together the granulated sugar and the water. Cook over high heat until a thermometer registers 240 degrees. Remove from the heat.
5) In the bowl of a standing mixer, whisk the remaining three egg whites on low until foamy. Increase the speed to medium-high and beat until medium-stiff peaks form. With the mixer on high, add the sugar syrup to the whipped whites, avoiding the sides of the bowl and the whisk. Beat until the mixture is cooled and stiff peaks form, about five minutes.
6) Add ¼ of the meringue to the almond flour mix and stir vigorously until combined. Add the remaining meringue and carefully fold the mixture to fully combine.
7) Transfer the batter to a pastry bag fitted with a medium round tip and pipe onto the baking sheet, just filling the circles and ending with a swift swirl to prevent a peak from forming on top. Slam the sheets on the counter a few times to release any air bubbles and sprinkle the tops with the rainbow nonpareils.
8) Let the sheets stand at room temperature for at least forty-five minutes until a dry skin forms on the top off the shells.
9) Preheat your oven to 300 degrees.
10) Bake each sheet separately for about 15-18 minutes until the shells are firm and then let them cool completely on the pans.
11) Pipe your filling on half the shells and top with a second shell.
