Have you ever looked at a painting or sculpture and wondered what it would be like to enter into it, to see what came just before or just after? This is the premise behind the eighth and latest ballet currently being performed by Ballet Pixelle in Second Life, choreographed by founder and artistic director Inarra Saarinen, set to music by the Emmy Award winning composer Kurt Bestor. In “Degas Dances” artworks created by Edgar Degas come to life. Divided into three acts “Ballet Class”, “Dress Rehearsal” and “The Performance” illustrate the day to day lives of dancers in nineteenth century Paris.

In the first act, “Ballet Class”, the audience is first shown Dance Studio on the Rue de la Peletier (1872). The dancers in the scene come to life, stretching, twirling and practicing under the watchful eye of the dance master.

“Dress Rehearsal”, the second act, is divided into two scenes. Scene I focuses on the very famous sculpture, Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen.  A young dancer seems to escape from inside the sculpture, relishing her brief period of freedom, before disappearing again.  Scene II presents three works, Two Dancers on the Stage ( 1874), L’Etoile”( 1878) and Blue Rehearsal (1875). One dancer steps out of each work and gives us a taste of the performance that has been recorded by Degas.

The final act “The Performance” incorporates a machinima, so that the dancer on stage appears to be actually dancing with the dancer on the surface of the painting, recreating a “living” version of Dancers in Violet, Arms Upraised (1900).

This ballet is fascinating on a number of levels. First of all, Degas’s artworks are themselves inspired by another artform, dance.  Degas’ artworks have now provided the basis for another kind of art, virtual ballet. Art influencing art creating new art. However, Degas is also presenting very real lives, and in that respect his paintings are not coming out of art, but out of the everyday world of people going about their business, which happens to be making art. The third act adds yet another layer to this when the very real avatar (which is a bit of a conundrum in itself) dances with an avatar in a machinima. Where does the real end and the virtual begin?

I described this as an “Impressionist” ballet. As far as I know that is not a ballet term, I am using it as an art historical term applied to ballet. The Impressionists, in general, tried to capture fleeting light effects on canvas and they developed new techniques of applying paint to canvas in order to do so. Degas himself preferred to describe his work as “realist” not “impressionist” despite the fact that he exhibited his work along with the Impressionists and even organized the Impressionist exhibitions.  His subject matter tends to be a bit different from many of the Impressionists, Monet and Sisley for example, who are known for landscapes, which is not what Degas generally did. But as with the other Impressionists Degas is trying to present moments in time, the instant when a dancer stretches, or pirouettes or ties her shoe.  He was very interested in lines, which is why ballet was a favourite subject of his, recording the line of the body in different positions. Ballet Pixelle, with founder and artistic director Inarra Saarinen, have taken Degas’ lines and extended them. Perhaps the best way to think of “Degas Dances” is in the words of the Master of Ceremonies AbaBrukh Aabye when he said to the audience “We will simply allow you to experience it...”

1. First act

2. Second act, scene 2

3. Second act, scene 2, detail

4. Second act, scene 1

5. Third act