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A century-old teenager is the focus of a musical and an art exhibit in Washington right now. The National Gallery of Art is showing Edgar Degas' statue Little Dancer Aged Fourteen in conjunction with the Kennedy Center's Oct. 25 opening of Little Dancer, a new show inspired by the sculpture.

Ballet students Brittany Yevoli and Ava Durant, both 14, see themselves in Degas' statue. Looking at her, they stand as she does — fourth position, weight on the left leg, right leg forward, foot turned out to the right. They recognize her tutu, her shoes and her perfect posture.

"It looks like she's standing in rehearsal," Yevoli says.

They also notice the young girls hands, clasped firmly behind her back. "Maybe showing respect," Durant says, "but also just sort of the way that we're supposed to stand in class."

Little Dancer is charming, even entrancing, yet the French had a less flattering nickname for the Paris Opera Ballet corps. "They called the students rats," curator Alison Luchs says. "They were little; they were thin; they scampered; they came in from the streets."

Luchs sees determination in the young ballerina's face — one writer called her "Miss Bossy Pants" — but conservator Shelley Sturman sees a bit of mystery. "Her eyes are half closed, her head is tilted," Sturman says. "She's ready to rise above that rat of the opera mystique."

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Degas used a real bodice, tutu, ribbon and even real hair in his sculpture. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon/ Courtesy of the National Gallery hide caption

itoggle caption Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon/ Courtesy of the National Gallery

Degas used a real bodice, tutu, ribbon and even real hair in his sculpture.

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon/ Courtesy of the National Gallery

Degas' Disappearing Muse

Degas made many sculptures, but Little Dancer is the only one he ever exhibited, and he worked on it for years. He made dozens of drawings before he began to sculpt with clay and beeswax, shaping and re-shaping this National Gallery original. X-rays show he stabilized the 39-inch figure with lead pipe wrapped in rope, and used wire for her arms.

"And to make them stiffer and firmer, he actually put in old paint brushes," Sturman says. To tilt her head, he put a spring coil — maybe from a chair or mattress — inside her neck. And then, he dressed her. It was totally unconventional: He gave her a real cotton bodice, waxed so it looks bronzy; a real tutu; a real silk ribbon tied around a braid made of real, blond human hair; and real linen slippers – pink and also waxed.

How did critics react in 1881? "A lot of them thought it was awful," Sturman says. "They were stunned by the realism. They were used to seeing sculptures of women in marble and bronze."

They were also used to seeing goddesses, not a flat-chested, skinny, coltish adolescent like Marie Van Goethem, the ballerina who posed for the sculpture.

"[Her name is] written on a Degas drawing," Sturman says. "[Her] parents came from Belgium. The father was a tailor; the mother was a laundress."

Marie started modeling for Degas around 1878. Curator Allison Luchs says her dance career ended four years later. "She was dismissed from the ballet. The implication is that she was missing rehearsals or getting something wrong. And she disappears. We don't know what became of her."

The new musical Little Dancer imagines Marie's life.

A Talented Street Urchin

Lynn Ahrens, who wrote the book and lyrics for the musical, says she got the idea for Little Dancer when she saw a bronze replica of the statue at the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts. Curious about the story behind it, Ahrens did some research on Degas and Marie.

"I began to see a story emerging about an artist who was beginning to go blind, who was frightened that he was losing his power to paint," she says. "And into his life, somehow, walks a little girl who inspires him, in some way, because she is such an urchin, such a spirit and a stubborn soul, and he begins to sketch her and suddenly decides that he wants to sculpt."

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Tony Award-winning actor Boyd Gaines plays Edgar Degas opposite the New York City Ballet's Tiler Peck, as Marie Van Goethem, during a Manhattan rehearsal. Paul Kolnik/Courtesy of the Kennedy Center hide caption

itoggle caption Paul Kolnik/Courtesy of the Kennedy Center

Tony Award-winning actor Boyd Gaines plays Edgar Degas opposite the New York City Ballet's Tiler Peck, as Marie Van Goethem, during a Manhattan rehearsal.

Paul Kolnik/Courtesy of the Kennedy Center

Ahrens and her collaborator, composer Stephen Flaherty, have created a musical that's both historically informed and highly speculative. In a Manhattan rehearsal studio, many of Degas' most famous paintings and sketches are taped to the wall — ballerinas slumping in exhaustion, rich men in black hats checking out the girls, absinthe drinkers. Director and choreographer Susan Stroman has put them all onstage, but says the heart of Little Dancer is the story of a prickly artist finding his equally prickly young muse in one of those ballet rats.

"You want to believe that she had language," Stroman says, "and she, you know, was like an Artful Dodger almost. And so that's what we have created, in essence."

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Peck says she sees her character, the young Marie Van Goethem, as a survivor. Matthew Karas/Courtesy of the Kennedy Center hide caption

itoggle caption Matthew Karas/Courtesy of the Kennedy Center

Peck says she sees her character, the young Marie Van Goethem, as a survivor.

Matthew Karas/Courtesy of the Kennedy Center

New York City Ballet star Tiler Peck plays young Marie as a street urchin — a very talented street urchin, but one who has no qualms picking people's pockets, including Monsieur Degas', to get money for pointe shoes.

"What I see her as is just like a survivor," Peck says. "She does anything to make her ends meet. You know, there's no hope for her at home. She goes home and her mom's drunk all the time, her mom's asking her for her money. And I feel like the ballet is the one sort of happy hope that she has in her life."

She's caught between many things, says composer Stephen Flaherty. "She's not a child; she's not an adult. She's sort of in between, in the cracks, and that's one of the things we really wanted to capture." It's that "in between-ness" that attracts Degas.

While the musical comes up with the reason Marie is dismissed from the Paris Opera, it doesn't exactly say what happened to her afterwards. There's a dream ballet which offers a variety of possible paths, and the character of older Marie quite literally haunts the show.

"By having an adult Marie and a young Marie, we're saying that she survived," director Susan Stroman says. "And that's a good thing. And that's what we would hope for.

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The U.S. military confirmed Sunday an airdropped delivery of small arms, ammunition and medical supplies to Kurdish forces in the Syrian town of Kobani on the border with Turkey. The 27 bundles of supplies were provided by Kurdish authorities in Iraq.

In a statement, U.S. Central Command said the airdrops, executed by three C-130 cargo planes, were intended to help Kurdish fighters defend the city against the group calling itself the Islamic State.

"This assistance is another example of U.S. resolve to deny ISIL key terrain and safe haven as well as our commitment to assist those forces who oppose ISIL," CENTCOM said in the statement, using a widely-used acronym for the Islamic State.

Polat Can, a spokesman for Kurdish forces in Kobani, acknowledged the delivery on his Twitter feed and added that he would soon be posting some "good news."

In the past two weeks, U.S. forces have conducted 135 airstrikes against ISIL in and around the city of Kobani. The CENTCOM statement says the strikes have killed hundreds of fighters for the Islamic State and badly degraded the group's military resources.

In a conference call with reporters following the announcement, senior administration officials said more resupply missions were possible.

"We're trying to stay one step ahead of an opportunistic enemy," said one official.

The Turkish government has stated its opposition to U.S. arms deliveries to Kurdish forces. Turkish officials link the Kurdish rebels in Syria to the PKK, a Kurdish group in Turkey that has been recognized as a terrorist group by the U.S. and NATO.

In a phone call on Saturday, President Barack Obama notified Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the U.S. military's plans to airdrop the arms and supplies into Kobani. Administration officials would not characterize Erdogan's reaction but acknowledged Turkey's range of concerns.

One official said there was "an urgent need to resupply" and that airdrops should be viewed as a humanitarian mission, citing concerns that Islamic State militants would massacre the Kurdish population in Kobani if the group is able to take over the town. A land route for more supplies was discussed but another official said during the call that such a plan would require Turkey's cooperation.

CENTCOM's statement Sunday reiterated that the situation in Kobani is still "fragile." Last week, CENTCOM Commander Gen. Lloyd J. Austin stated that despite stepped-up strategies and efforts by allied forces, "Kobani could still fall."

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Moffie Kanneh is angry at the United States. When I meet the Liberian lawyer, he asks immediately where I am from. "Take this back to Washington," he says. "I am extremely furious."

In the days after the death of Thomas Eric Duncan — the Liberian man diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas last month — Kanneh was one of many Liberians who told me that case changed the way they see the United States. Many noted how different Duncan's experience in the U.S. healthcare system seemed from white patients who contracted Ebola, like Dr. Kent Brantly, who recovered from the disease last month, NBC cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, who is making progress in his treatment there, and most recently two nurses who treated Duncan, both of whom are doing well.

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Goats and Soda

Ebola Evacuees: Who Are They, Where'd They Go, How'd They Fare?

Sitting outside a small caf in Monrovia, Kanneh explains that he feels U.S. attitudes toward Liberians are tinged with both racism and xenophobia. "The combination of African, black..." he shakes his head. "I still think if Eric was an American they would have given him preferential treatment."

Some people also see Duncan's case as evidence that the U.S. doesn't want West Africans to seek treatment in the United States. "It was a racist approach in a larger sense," explains Franklin Wesseh, who describes himself to me as an opposition party member and writer. He's referring to the slow response by the Dallas hospital that initially sent Duncan home despite a fever and weakness.

"I personally think [Duncan] could have been saved," he says, sipping coffee after church on a Sunday afternoon. "He was given less attention. It was a way of probably discouraging Liberians who contracted the disease and want to go there."

But while many Liberians I spoke to are frustrated by what they see as anti-African prejudice, some within the government urge less focus on race and more on fighting the epidemic.

"When we play the race card there will be problems," says Nathaniel Toe, the superintendent for Maryland County, Liberia. His county, in the southeastern part of the country, doesn't have an Ebola treatment center yet, and Toe is concerned that the U.S. could react to charges of racism by slowing down delivery of aid. One of the 18 U.S.-built treatment centers is planned for Maryland county.

"We are being distracted," he says. The real issue, he thinks, is not racism or American attitudes toward Liberia. It is access to healthcare. "I would like to see the intervention reach all of Liberia, [with] the same quality of service as in Atlanta, in Dallas."

"Take that to Washington," he says. "We need better hospitals."

Another government official I meet, Mitchell Jones of the Liberian Ministry of Commerce and Industry, echoes Toe's sentiments. "This is not a time for politics," he says.

Jones speaks poetically about unity and democracy. "We Liberians must be as one people," he tells me. As he talks, he slides away from me on the bench we share.

"I'm sorry," he says. "Now we are all afraid of touching, of the brushing of skin even."

He equates the Ebola epidemic in Liberia to the 9/11 attacks in the US. "This is the time that we all hold together. Like when Bin Laden attacked the United States, it was a time for every American to hold together to fight their common enemy. Liberians today, our common enemy is Ebola."

Despite such calls for unity, the Liberians I met were frustrated and angry at the U.S. And those emotions are coloring the way they view U.S. aid. Even after Thomas Eric Duncan's story fades from the headlines, Wesseh says he will think of it when the U.S. says it is committed to helping Liberia through the crisis.

That a Liberian citizen died of Ebola when American citizens have survived makes him feel that America may not be truly committed to helping the Liberian people.

"America protects its interests," he says. "Yes they are here today, making sure Ebola can be kicked out of Liberia, but only for their [business] transactions. I personally am disappointed."

Back in the U.S. this week, Duncan's nephew echoed some of the comments I heard in Monrovia. In an essay written for the Dallas Morning News, Josephus Weeks stated that his uncle did not have to die and that his treatment had been substandard.

Weeks brought up the issue of race in his opening paragraph: "He told the nurse he had recently been in Liberia. But he was a man of color with no health insurance and no means to pay for treatment, so within hours he was released with some antibiotics and Tylenol."

He went on to say that "Thomas Eric Duncan was a victim of a broken system. Some speculate that this was a failure of the internal communications systems. Others have speculated that antibiotics and Tylenol are the standard protocol for a patient without insurance. ... Their error set the wheels in motion for my uncle's death and additional Ebola cases, and their ignorance, incompetence or indecency has created a national security threat for our country."

Weeks captures what everyone I spoke to in Monrovia agreed with: that Duncan had not been treated with dignity and that his death was a tragedy.

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Protests broke out in Saudi Arabia this week over the death sentence of a leading Shiite cleric. Human rights activists call his sentencing political and warn that by killing him, the country may deepen sectarian discord and spur more violence.

Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr was a leading voice during protests in 2011 and 2012 by the minority Shiite Muslim community.

The Shiites were demanding reforms to anti-Shiite practices that shut them out of top government employment and prevent them from building places of worship. Saudi Arabia's ruling family and the majority of the country are Sunni Muslims.

Nimr was a bold voice for Saudi Shias.

"From the moment you're born, you're surrounded by fear," he said in a 2011 sermon. "The people took to the streets demanding freedom, dignity and reform. We don't mind getting arrested with those who've been detained and we don't even mind shedding our blood for their sake."

Less than a year later, Nimr was arrested, and shot and wounded in the process. Police claim he used violence against them; his supporters and family say that's not true.

He was sentenced to death Wednesday on charges that include being disloyal to the ruling family, using violence and seeking foreign meddling.

Human Rights Watch researcher Adam Coogle says the sentencing was political and could bring more unrest.

Middle East

In Saudi Arabia, Shiite Muslims Challenge Ban On Protests

"This can end up festering over a long period of time and ultimately leads to instability," Coogle says.

Coogle says the court that sentenced Nimr, a specialized criminal court, was originally formed to try terrorism cases but is now being used to silence critics. Nimr's nephew, an activist, was also sentenced to death in the same court. Human Rights Watch is calling for the court to be abolished.

Coogle says western allies like the U.S. need to address Saudi Arabia's human rights record.

"If we're going to support human rights in Syria, for example, it's also important to have conversations with our own ally," he says.

In Saudi, small protests have begun.

In the eastern province of Qatif, home to a large part of Saudi's Shiite community, protesters called for the downfall of the ruling family. If Nimr is killed, activists warn, the unrest will grow.