news release

Channel Thirteen (WNET New York), New York City's local public television station, released its documentary Degas and the Dance, the Man Behind the Easel on DVD. The documentary, which won a 2004 Peabody Award, examines Edgar Degas's intimate relationship with the Paris Opera, where he regularly attended performances and observed ballet classes. Among the DVD special features is an audio tour produced by Acoustiguide for the 2002 exhibition, Degas and the Dance, organized by the acclaimed Federation of Arts, the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The audio tour is accompanied by a slide show of 9 related works, which viewers can choose to enlarge on their screen.

The audio tour includes Graham Beal, the Director of the Detroit Institute of the Arts, who engages the curators in a live discussion about the works; the effect is one of listening in on a conversation among experts. Exhibition curators Richard Kendall, an art historian and Degas scholar, and Jill DeVonyar, an art and dance historian and ballet instructor, examine Degas's work from a dance perspective. Their insights reveal the artist's intimate knowledge of the world of 19th-century ballet, his rendering of its often harsh realities with the fervor and vision of a modern day documentary filmmaker. Tired dancers sit languidly on the floor adjusting shoe ribbons a young ballerina perfects an arabesques a wealthy seducer waits backstage for a performance to end and the excitement of the crowd as the dancers move across the stage Such details come to life as the urators and the director consider the works together. The audio tour encourages listeners to share the artist's unique perspective, underscoring one of the central themes of the DVD documentary: that Edgar Degas was a painter dedicated to capturing the nuances of contemporary life.