Mr. Degas and Mr. Calder go to the ballet - art project

Arts & Activities, March, 2003 by Kate Cross

MATERIALS

* Pencils

* Prismacolor[R] pencils

* Black paper

* Photographs of dancers

* Copper wire

* Needlenose pliers

* Wire cutters

* Thin copper sheets

* Wooden bases

* Armature or stiff wire

* Fishing line (for mounting mobiles)

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Students will ...

* become familiar with the life and work of Edgar Degas and Alexander Calder.

* experience a live dance performance.

* have the opportunity, to use a live model for gesture drawing.

* use science textbooks to research the correct proportions of the human body.

* demonstrate their knowledge of balance by positioning their sculpture correctly.

Students need to see live performances of music and dance. Actual performers are life-size, rather than television-size, and live music surrounds them, rather than coming from a small, television speaker. Through the experience, children can develop appropriate manners for attending a theater performance and can have the opportunity to become patrons of the arts.

Thanks to a grant, my students had the opportunity to attend a student matinee of Opus Cactus, a modern ballet performed by Ballet Arizona. This performance was the culminating activity for the study and comparison of two different artists: Edgar Degas and Alexander Calder.

To begin this learning experience, the students studied the work of French Impressionist Edgar Degas, focusing on his ballerina compositions. After watching a video about Degas' life, his fascination with ballet, opera and the modern invention of the camera, I surrounded my students with prints of his pastel and oil compositions. Naturally, the primary subject was ballerinas in various poses.

I also placed photographs of modern dancers at each table so that the students could select a realistic pose in order to get a better idea of body proportion. We all looked at our own bodies and the proportions of each section of our legs, torso, neck, arms, shoulders and hands.

To help students understand basic anatomy, each table was given diagrams of human bodies from science books. The correct shaping of the body was the most difficult part, but was vital for the second phase of the project. Some of the students had an idea of the musculature because they had studied it in P.E. (This would be an opportunity for integrating art with science and anatomy.) Each student created a composition of a ballerina in pencil, and then determined the light source so that they could add the lights and shadows to their compositions.

The students then rendered the compositions with Prismacolor[R] pencils. I had the students work on black paper, and emphasized that all areas had to be covered with color. This required blending with the pencils--much like paint--and resulted in a paint-like feel and effect. After a critique session, some minor changes were made, and the work was displayed in our art room.

Next, the students looked at the work of Alexander Calder, the inventor of mobiles in art, who used natural shapes to create free-form sculpture. After watching a video, I laid out string, heavy wire and simple objects so that students could experiment with balance, create a simple moving sculpture and then watch its movement.

We discussed the similarities between the movements of a dancer to the movement of a mobile, such as the fact that both have languid, free-flowing movement. We imagined Alexander Calder and Edgar Degas attending the ballet together. How would their resulting artworks compare? How would a mobile of a dancer be different than a picture of a dancer? We decided that Calder's dancers would be more like a video, whereas Degas' works would be more like still photographs.

The last step was to integrate the two artistic dimensions and create a wire mobile of a dancer. A real, live dancer came into class to pose for the students so that they could make quick gesture drawings of her different poses. From these drawings, each student created a ballerina in a pose that suggested movement. Students used copper wire for the sculptures, and cut and attached thin copper foil for the "dance costumes." Each sculpture was suspended from an armature attached to a base with fishing line, so that the dancer appeared to be moving. The copper wire was stained with a patina, or oxidizing agent, that turned parts of the sculpture green.

While timing had not allowed us to see a ballet performance first, we attended a student matinee as the culmination for this unit. I had described the elements and idea of Opus Cactus to them as they worked on their projects, and so by the time the students actually saw the performance they had a wealth of information and were able to appreciate all the different aspects of the performance. They were very sensitive to the moves and poses of the dancers and talked about the dance performance for days afterward. Several students even purchased tickets to attend the full-length evening performance.

While Alexander Calder never created sculptures of ballerinas, the students understood the purpose of the study. They enjoyed looking at all the various poses of their own sculptures and comparing them to poses of Edgar Degas' dancers and the dancers in the ballet.