Degas's Little Dancer Takes to the Paris Stage

Degas's most famous sculpture, of a little Parisian dancer, came to life as a ballet at the Paris Opera last night.

La Petite Danseuse, with a cast of 60, pays tribute to the model who posed for La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans, the only sculpture Degas exhibited in his lifetime.

The bronze in a white tutu is in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

The new work was inspired by recent detective work by the Opera museum curator Martine Kahane, who discovered that Marie van Goetham was brought up in a poverty-stricken family of prostitutes and was jailed soon after posing for Degas, at the age of 14, in 1881.

The bronze was ridiculed when it was shown in the sixth impressionist exhibition, and was not recognised as a masterpiece until Marie was middle aged.

She was one of three sisters recruited as "petits rats", a term still used to describe child ballerinas destined for the corps de ballet.

But the sisters also worked the cabarets around Pigalle, where their mother entertained clients in a nightclub called Le Chat Noir.

Like most young ballerinas, the girls had rich "protectors" who sponsored their stage careers. One of the men-about-town was robbed of 700 francs by Marie's older sister, Antoinette, while they dined together in a private salon.

Antoinette was jailed with her mother and Marie, who were suspected of complicity.

Drawing on a 19th-century bestseller, La Famille Cardinal, which tells the story of a family of prostitutes, the Paris Opera balletmaster and choreographer Patrice Bart imagined what happened to Marie after she lost her place at the state opera house, the Palais Garnier, because she was seen soliciting in the street.

His ballet shows her in later life as a laundress in Montmartre, a job often taken by ageing prostitutes.

Bart was also inspired by Degas's many paintings of classical dance scenes which, he said, "represented the cruel and decadent world of ballet at the end of the 19th century".

He had to guess at Marie's fate, because it is not recorded, but the Opera archives do disclose the the career of her younger sister, Charlotte.

After success as a dancer, she taught at the Palais Garnier, training some of its best known stars.