For anyone who grew up wanting to be a ballet dancer, there is a stunning exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts that will bring those childhood dreams alive: Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement.

The extensive collection features more than 85 paintings and sculptures of dancers, many of whom were ballet dancers based at the Paris Opéra during the late 1800s.  Edgar Degas was known as the Painter of Dancers and he was fascinated by the study of movement, especially that of dancers bodies.

His works show ballet dancers rehearsing in the studio, performing on stage and preparing off stage. Degas interprets them in such an intimate way that you feel you are also in the room. 

Some of my favourite pieces include Dancers in Blue and Three Dancers, as well as Degas’ famous bronze sculpture Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. The latter is based on a series of 20 drawings of a live model from different angles – a technique known as photosculpture.

Degas also experimented with photography, which was a fairly new medium at the time, and three of his only known photographs are displayed at the exhibition.

Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement at the Royal Academy of Arts until the 11 Dec 2011. Book tickets

• Miró, Tate Modern, 14 Apr-11 Sep
  The first retrospective of Surrealist painter Joan Miró’s work in London for nearly 50 years
• Degas Dancers, Royal Academy, 17 Sep-11 Dec
  A landmark exhibition featuring Edgar Degas’ famous paintings and sculptures of young ballerinas
• Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World, British Museum, 3 Mar-3 Jul
  More than 200 ancient objects from the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul
• Tracey Emin: Love is What You Want, Hayward Gallery, 18 May-29 Aug
  The first-ever major survey of Tracey Emin’s work in London
• Glamour of the Gods: Hollywood Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, 7 Jul-23 Oct
  Film portraits from the industry’s golden age, the period from 1920 to 1960

Let me know what you’re excited about seeing at London’s art galleries in 2011 in the comments below.

The year kicks off with Modern British Sculpture, the first exhibition for 30 years to examine 20th-century British sculpture. “It’s a long overdue exhibition,” said curator Dr Adrian Locke. The show will feature Hepworth, Moore and Hirst alongside Jacob Epstein, Richard Long and Anthony Caro.

March sees the opening of Watteau’s Drawings: Virtuosity and Delight, dedicated to the French artist Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). Watteau’s subjects included theatre actors, rural labourers and children. He also created sensual depictions of nude women.  “It will be quite a sexy show,” promised Kathleen Soriano, the Royal Academy’s director of exhibitions.

Eye Witness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century opens in June, showing the work of Hungarian artists who left their home country to make their names in the fields of photojournalism, fashion and art photography. The display will include 200 photos from 1914 to 1989, ranging from rural scenes to war photography and radical fashion pictures.

Degas Dancers, featuring Degas’ famous paintings and sculptures of young ballerinas, is sure to be a crowd pleaser. Curator Ann Dumas (who was responsible for this year’s Van Gogh blockbuster) hopes the show will alter people’s perceptions of Degas. Although known for his pretty pictures of dancers, Degas was a forward-thinking and experimental artist, who was “well aware of and sometimes actively involved in” early developments in photography and film, said Dumas.

The focus will turn to Russia in autumn 2011, with the opening of Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935. This exhibition will look at Russian avant-garde architecture during a brief but intense period of design and construction, with photos showing how the drive towards a new socialist society brought together radical art and architecture.

As well as these highlights, there’ll be the usual Summer Exhibition and RA Schools Show in the summer, and a series of exhibitions in the Architecture Space, including “something rather unexpected from Will Alsop,” according to Kathleen Soriano.

For more details visit www.royalacademy.org.uk