Renoir started life as a poor working class boy, working as a porcelain painter in a factory - a job that was intense and delicate - good grounding for the work he would later do.
"Acknowledging modern criticism of Renoir's sensuality, Lawrence Gowing wrote: “ "Is there another respected modern painter whose work is so full of charming people and attractive sentiment? Yet what lingers is not cloying sweetness but a freshness that is not entirely explicable...One feels the surface of his paint itself as living skin: Renoir's aesthetic was wholly physical and sensuous, and it was unclouded...These interactions of real people fulfilling natural drives with well-adjusted enjoyment remain the popular masterpieces of modern art (as it used to be called), and the fact that they are not fraught and tragic, without the slightest social unrest in view, or even much sign of the spacial and communal disjunction which some persist in seeking, is far from removing their interests." ”
Albert Aurier, an art critic and early essayist on the impressionists, wrote in 1892: “ "With such ideas, with such a vision of the world and of femininity, one might have feared that Renoir would create a work which was merely pretty and merely superficial. Superficial it was not; in fact it was profound, for if, indeed, the artist has almost completely done away with the intellectuality of his models in his paintings, he has, in compensation, been prodigal with his own. As to the pretty, it is undeniable in his work, but how different from the intolerable prettiness of fashionable painters." ”
In a preview to the exhibition 'Renoir Landscapes 1865-1883' at the National Gallery, London in spring 2007, The Guardian wrote that "Even Degas laughed at his friend's style, calling it as puffy as cotton wool," but that "if we're going to love him, we need to love his chocolate box qualities, too."" http://www.pierre-auguste-renoir.org/biography.html
"In the early 1870s, Renoir and his friends joined with other avant-garde artists to form a loose-knit artistic circle now known as the impressionist movement. He participated in the first impressionist exhibition (1874) and throughout the 1870s remained committed to impressionist ideals. Renoir, however, continued to produce paintings of a more traditional sort, including portraits and scenes of leisure enjoyment, such as Le Moulin de la Galette (1876; Musée d'Orsay, Paris).
In his portraits and society paintings, Renoir masterfully rendered the shimmering interplay of light and color on surfaces, the prime goal of impressionism, but also kept an underlying sensuality." http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/Art/Renoir/Renoir.shtml
Renoirs' style is very soft and quick (looking), while still being detailed and subtle. He used colours that closest to what was actually there, instead of the glorified style and colouring used in the old Masters paintings in the Salon and other important galleries. He showed great perception in displaying parties and ordinary scenes, while the old Masters used stuffy, set-up scenes in studios.
The painting shows a dancing couple, captured in a moment of joy. The canvas is tall and thin, almost clinging to the dancers, as if making them the most important people in the world - which they may have felt like at the time; there is also very little in the frame besides the dancers, adding to this feeling. The colours of the clothes may represent a sort of Yin and Yang of the relationship they may be having; he wears a dark suit, she has a light frilly dress. 
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