These include a man courting a woman, two women talking to an actor and a presumed self-portrait of the painter as a musician holding a set of bagpipes – these had had a sexual symbolism since the Middle Ages, such as in Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights.

[3] The main dancer who occupies the center of the painting would be the actress Christine Charlotte Desmares, who was the lover of the Duke of Orleans, with whom she had had, in 1702, a bastard daughter, Angélique de Froissy.

The dancer in the black hat facing her has been identified as Nicolas Vleughels, Flemish painter, friend and owner of Watteau, who rose to the rank of director of the Academy of Rome (1725–36).

Since the Middle Ages, the bagpipe was recognized as an instrument of sexual symbolism; Jêrome Bosch included it as such in his famous triptych of the Garden of Earthly Delights.

Watteau treats various materials in a similar way, both taffeta and water, people and statues, foliage and curls, thus succeeding in giving unity to the painting.