Ballet dancers in their dressing room 1923

Zinaida Serebriakova made this sketch of ballet dancers with pastels, and when I look at this image, I think about Degas, obviously, but something else is happening here. See how the dancers are captured in these fleeting, informal moments backstage. You can almost feel the energy of the dressing room, the anticipation, the nervous excitement before a performance. There’s one dancer fastening her shoe; another adjusting her hair. It feels intimate, like we’re getting a secret glimpse into their world. I think of the artist, Zinaida, using pastel to capture it all. You can see the marks she makes on the surface, the way the colors blend and bleed together. It’s not about perfect realism. It’s about capturing a feeling, a mood, an atmosphere. I can imagine her, charcoal in hand, trying to keep up with all the movement. The dancers are probably exhausted, but they keep going. Artists are always looking at other artists, they steal from each other, copy from each other, and they keep the conversation moving across time.