Little Dancer of Fourteen Years
The "Little Dancer" wax sculpture we see today is a reworked version of the original sculpture that was shown in 1881. After seeing the wax sculpture in Degas’ living quarters in April 1903, the New York collector Louisine Havemeyer expressed interest in buying the wax. After proposing a bronze or cast wax of the sculpture, which Mrs. Havemeyer refused, Degas took his wax figure upstairs to his working studio and told Vollard he was reworking the sculpture for Havemeyer for 40,000 francs. Degas never sold the sculpture to Mrs. Havemeyer. After Degas died, it was found in a corner of his studio. Paul Lefond, Degas’ biographer, described the "Little Dancer" wax after Degas’ death as "nothing but a ruin;" and Mary Cassatt telegraphed Mrs. Havemeyer "Statue Bad Condition." However, the wax sculpture we know today is not a ruin. It is Degas' reworked second version of his wax figure. At some point before Degas extensively reworked his sculpture, he allowed a plaster to be cast from the wax figure. This recently re-discovered plaster records the "Little Dancer"’s original pose, bodice, and hairdo. The plaster is now in a private collection in the United States.
Kenneth MacMillan
On the strength of the workshop successes, de Valois commissioned the 25-year-old MacMillan to create a ballet for performance at Sadler's Wells. "Danses concertantes", to music by Stravinsky, was first produced in January 1955, with designs by Nicholas Georgiadis, with whom MacMillan collaborated extensively over the next years. Parry counts among MacMillan's early influences the modernism of choreographers such as Roland Petit, Jerome Robbins and Antony Tudor, and the craftsmanship of Ashton, from whom MacMillan said he learned how a ballet was made. "The Times" commented that with this piece it was clear that a powerful choreographic talent had arrived. The critic Clement Crisp has described the piece as "a bravura display using a witty, allusive classical vocabulary, remade by a creator who knew the cinema and spoke the movement language of his generation". With the success of "Danses concertantes" MacMillan concluded that his future lay in choreography rather than dancing. After a fierce argument with de Valois, who wanted him to continue in both capacities, he got his way, and from 1955 his contract with the company (on a slightly reduced salary) was purely as a choreographer. His only Covent Garden appearances as a dancer after that were two performances as an Ugly Step-sister in "Cinderella" alongside Ashton in 1956.