Rodin and dance

Rodin and Dance: The Essence of Movement' is the first serious study of Rodin's late sculptural series known as the Dance Movements. Exploring the artist's fascination with dance and bodies in extreme acrobatic poses, the exhibition and accompanying catalogue give an account of Rodin's passion for new forms of dance - from South-Asian dances to the music hall and the avant garde - which began appearing on the French stage around 1900. Rodin made hundreds of drawings and watercolours of dancers. From about 1911 he also gave sculptural expression to this fascination with dancers' bodies and movements in creating the Dance Movements, a series of small clay figure studies (each approx. 30 cm in height) that stretch and twist in unsettling ways. These leaping, turning figures in terracotta and plaster were found in the artist's studio after his death and were not exhibited during Rodin's lifetime or known beyond his close circle. Presented alongside the associated drawings and photographs of some of the dancers, they show a new side to Rodin's art, in which he pushed the boundaries of sculpture, expressing themes of flight and gravity. This exhibition catalogue aims to become the author