The drawings and paintings of dancers practicing, dancing, and resting behind the scenes or in class were part of a formal motif that became an obsession and were linked to the pictorial research of numerous Post-Impressionist painters. It appeared repeatedly in Edgar Degas’s work since 1871—after his trip to the United States—until the onset of his blindness in 1914.

Degas was interested in the movement of dancing bodies, but his work also included the motions of counter-dance. In other words, during the intervals, when the dancing had stopped or was about to begin, when the dancers were resting, adjusting their dress, warming up, and executing preliminary exercises. This is precisely the motif of this drawing, which is part of a series of preparatory studies for the pastel Danseuses dans les coulisses, produced around 1890 and preserved at the Saint Louis Art Museum in Missouri. Executed in charcoal, Degas focused on the definition of the dancers’ stances in this study, granting his lines much freedom. The dancer in the foreground appears ready to enter the scene with her inclined torso, hands on her hips, and head looking up, while the second dancer adopts a more informal position.