The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (French: La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans) is a sculpture begun c. 1880 by Edgar Degas of a young student of the Paris Opera Ballet dance school, a Belgian named Marie van Goethem.

The sculpture is two-thirds life size[2] and was originally sculpted in wax, an unusual choice of medium for the time.

"[11] When the La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans was shown in Paris at the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition of 1881, it received mixed reviews.

One critic, Paul Mantz, called her the "flower of precocious depravity," with a face "marked by the hateful promise of every vice" and "bearing the signs of a profoundly heinous character.

"[12] Comparisons with older art were made, perhaps partly because it was exhibited in a glass case, like classical sculpture in the Louvre, and was dressed in wig and clothes.

After Degas' death, his heirs (brother and sister's children[13]) made the decision to have the bronze repetitions of La Petite Danseuse and other wax and mixed-media sculptures cast.

[17] To construct the statue, Degas used pigmented beeswax, with a metal armature, rope, and paintbrushes covered by clay for structural support.

[24] A 2003 ballet with choreography by Patrice Bart and music by Denis Levaillant, La Petite Danseuse de Degas, was premiered by the Paris Opera.

[citation needed] In 2014, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. premiered the stage musical, Little Dancer, inspired by the story of the young ballerina immortalized by Edgar Degas in his famous sculpture.

Tiler Peck, principal dancer of New York City Ballet, led the cast and Susan Stroman was the director and choreographer for the production.

Buchanan draws parallels between Degas' work, the criminal theories of Cesare Lombroso, and the stage adaptation of Émile Zola's L'Assommoir.