There has been wide debate around why Degas painted his famous ballet dancers as it possibly alluded to another, “darker”, aspect of female dancers. Some sources suggest that the ballet dancers were also involved in sexual liaisons with wealthy men, otherwise knowns as “subscribers” to the theatre, referred to as abonnés in French. The rooms behind the stage, foyer de la danse, were reportedly where the dancers would meet these men. These rooms were also utilized for rehearsals before a show. The men would offer forms of financial support to ballerinas who were there that needed the work and additional support. With this, the ballerinas tended to succumb to the men because they would be given a better lifestyle and sometimes even a better role in the ballet. This reinforces the adage given to Degas as “the painter of dancing girls”; he painted more than dancing girls and showed us, the viewers, what happened when the curtain closed. Another example of this is in The Star (L’Étoile) (1878) where we see the ballerina’s “patron” standing towards the left behind the curtain.