After the last grand jeté, the orchestra reaches an abrupt halt. Rounds of thunderous applause crash through the hall, echoing from the gilded walls to the velvet seats. The scent of Guerlain and Houbigant rises as the audience collectively surges to its feet, and all are focused on the dancers taking their bows. Afterwards, the dancers move into the coulisses and are not to be seen again until the next performance. The hall empties as the aristocrats and bourgeoisie socialize, their white fur stoles and opera gloves accompanied by the finest suits and polished shoes. The stage curtains sweep shut, and the remaining bits of chatter die down.
And so it begins.
The glamour and enchantment are all over, leaving the perfect amount of space for reality to seep in. After Les Petit Rats change out of their worn-out costumes, they make their way into the Foyer de la Danse. What happens next unfolds as a slow surrender from the world of tutus and pointé shoes to the world of the abonné, where impeccable suits and the perfume of luxury masks the stench of desperation and tyranny.
19th century Paris was host to a large range of issues. The city was quite destitute and rampant with unsanitary living conditions, so not many people lived a quality life — except for those with high statuses and positions in government, of course. With ballet on the rise, many impoverished young girls saw the art form as an opportunity at a better life, often with support from their parental figures.
Little did they know: the system they attempted to leave only led them into one equally as broken.
The Paris Opera was established in 1669 during King Louis XIV’s reign. As many sources would recount, King Louis XIV was fascinated with ballet, and this fueled his desire to establish a space meant just for that. The Paris Opera was originally known as the Académie Royale de Musique, and held its first performance, Pomone, in 1671. Most performances during this time period were held in venues such as the Salle de la Bouteille, Salle du Bel-Air, Théâtre du Palais-Royal, and more. But the most prominent Paris Opera house of the 19th century would come to be known as The Palais Garnier. The Palais Garnier began construction in 1861 under the rule of Napoleon III, and it was not completed until January of 1875. This opera house is a place that many girls of Paris, later known as Les Petit Rats, would turn to for the illusion of hope and support.
The Les Petit Rats were young, impoverished, and often apprentice dancers at the Paris Opera Ballet. The term Les Petit Rats was developed to hint at the small (petit), nimble bodies of these girls. The “small” was because of how malnourished they were, and the “nimble” because their body types were considered the norm for dancing. The ‘rats’ aspect was attributed to the light, scurrying sounds their pointe shoes would make on the wooden floors of rehearsal rooms that were located in the Palais Garnier attic. This term was also rooted in the social context of the time — people often held a classist and derogatory view of these dancers because of their backgrounds. Most of them were of the working class or impoverished, and they joined the Paris Opera to help support their families. Because of this, they were frowned upon and weren’t seen as equals by the bourgeoisie and those of the wealthier class, so this name provided a way for everyone in Paris to emphasize the dancers’ vulnerability and low status.
But away from the Paris Opera, these girls were so much more. They were actual people with actual lives. Take Marie van Goethem. During the late 1870s, when she began attending the Paris Opera, she was commonly known as “The Little Fourteen Year Old Dancer,” due to a sculpture that Edgar Degas made of her. Edgar Degas was an eminent French artist known for his depictions of ballet dancers at the Paris Opera, and Parisian nightlife. His art leaned towards realism and classical aesthetics, and by favoring intimate, rehearsal-room scenes over polished performances, he revealed the stark class disparities and commodification of the female body that was prevalent in 19th century Parisian high society. Ann Dumas, a curator at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and specialist in 19th century and early 20th century French art, said, “Degas’ interest in realism and his refusal to idealize these subjects were very unconventional at the time and differed greatly from traditional renditions.”
Marie van Goethem was born in Paris to Belgian parents who fled to France seeking a better life. She grew up with two sisters and her mother. Her mother was a laundress and always found herself scraping together the last bits of money she could find, just so the family could continue on. And because their income was so little, Goethem and the rest of her family were forced to move homes frequently. The spots they would live in would change, but not their quality of life. Their homes remained poverty stricken and deficient, which was never ideal for a family of four. Because of this, Goethem became one of the girls who joined the Paris Opera Ballet. Many accounts would come to note that life only grew harder for Goethem in the Paris Opera Ballet. She would work from eight to twelve hours daily, and was not given proper nourishment, like many of the other girls in the Paris Opera. On top of that, she was expected to dance and perform to the best of her abilities. Not many know why Edgar Degas chose her specifically to sculpt, but when he did, Goethem received widespread backlash from the public. Many couldn’t grasp why Degas, a man of high status, chose to waste his time sculpting “trash” like Goethem. She soon became a spectacle, with many pointing to her “monkey-like” and “ugly” features. But perhaps most offensive to the upper classes, Goethem came from an indigent background. They believed she should not have had the luxury of being sculpted and displayed to the public.
Her story, tragically, did not end well. After leaving the Paris Opera Ballet, Marie van Goethem disappeared into obscurity. Some accounts suggest she was dismissed for poor attendance. The girl who was immortalized in wax and bronze by one of history’s greatest artists faded into the shadows of Parisian poverty. Unlike the sculpture — which would one day be celebrated in museums worldwide — Marie herself was disposable, replaceable, and forgotten.
And she was not alone. For every girl who survived the Paris Opera Ballet system, countless others were broken by it. The Foyer de la Danse, an elegant backstage room where dancers would gather after performances, became notorious as a hunting ground for the abonnés — wealthy subscribers who purchased not just tickets to performances, but access to the dancers themselves. These men, dressed impeccably in their evening wear, would lounge in the foyer under the pretense of appreciating the art form, but their true intentions were far more sinister.
The abonnés held tremendous power over these vulnerable girls. They could influence casting decisions, provide financial support that low-income families desperately needed, or conversely, ensure a dancer’s career ended before it truly began. For Les Petit Rats, the choice was impossible: submit to the desires of these powerful men, or return to the streets from which they came. Their mothers, knowing the brutal reality of poverty, often encouraged these arrangements, viewing them as necessary transactions for survival rather than the true exploitative system they represented.
The Paris Opera administration turned a calculated blind eye to these arrangements. The abonné system was lucrative, and these wealthy patrons provided essential financial support to the institution. The girls were collateral damage in an economic system that valued art and aesthetics over human dignity. Behind each performance, with the ethereal grace, the soaring music, the magnificent costumes, lay a darker truth about power, class, and the commodification of young girls’ bodies.
This was the reality behind the curtain — the secret that high society whispered about in parlors but never acknowledged publicly. The same people who wept at the beauty of Giselle or La Sylphide saw nothing contradictory in treating the flesh-and-blood dancers as objects to be used and discarded. The Paris Opera Ballet, for all its artistic grandeur, functioned as a gilded cage where poverty drove young girls into a system that promised salvation but often delivered only another form of suffering, one perfumed with Guerlain and dressed in evening clothes.
This was the reality behind the curtain — the secret that high society whispered about in parlors but never acknowledged publicly.