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Marie and her two sisters, Antoinette and Charlotte, are dancers for the Paris Opéra in 1878. “Marie, Dancing” is a novel about the life and experiences of Marie Van Goethem. And although posing for Degas doesn't change Marie's life in the way she had planned, it definitely does change it more than she could have ever dared hope or imagine. This is a story of a girl who only wants a better life, some small pleasure within this dreary existence.

It's only within the safety and glory of Degas's studio, or while on the stage of the Opera that Marie feels secure that her life will improve-until the day she's dismissed from the School, Antoinette asks her to play nursemaid to her unborn child, and Jean-Pierre asks her to move away from Paris, the only home she's ever known.Ĭarolyn Meyer has brought the world of Paris, art, and dance to vivid life in MARIE, DANCING.

Mother is still drinking, Charlotte is the only girl of the three who shows real promise as a dancer who can make it her career, and her love interest, Jean-Pierre, has asked her to wait for him while he makes a name and a home for the two of them. But when Marie meets Edgar Degas and he asks her to pose for him, Marie prays that her life is about to change forever.Īnd change it does, but not in the ways she had suspected. Antoinette is being wooed by much older, and much wealthier men, and although she promises to send them money when she's set up as a mistress by her benefactor, she never does. Things soon change, though, for Marie and her entire family. Ballet is her life, along with the life of both of her sisters, enrolled under the tutelage of Madame Theodore at the ballet school.

The only thing that brings joy to Marie's life is dancing in the Paris Opera. Marie knows their family-made up of Mother, Tante Helene, older sister Antoinette, and younger sister Charlotte-are poor and destitute. Her drunken mother is unable to hold down a job, and the place where they're forced to live can only be described as squalor. With MARIE, DANCING, the story behind Edgar Degas's well known sculpture, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, is brought to vivid life in this fictionalized account.Īt fourteen, Marie van Goethem still holds out hope that one day her life will be, if not grand, then better than it is now. I can't count the times that I've seen a truly inspiring painting or sculpture and wondered what the inspiration behind it was.