Keep on your toes!

Recently I purchased the most adorable pair of Summer flats. I couldn't resist them as I noticed a pair of ballet pointe style slippers on the department store display. All pink, with box toes and crossed ankle straps. Awww...reminding me of my days in the ballet studio. I love ballet, and the pointe shoe is the ultimate goal of all ballerinas. And so, even though I swore I was only window-shopping that day, I left the store with shopping bag in hand.

I looked up the history of the pointe shoe and found the following:

Women began dancing ballet in 1681, with the founding of the Academie Royale de Danse during King Louis XIV' reign. The shoes had heels at that time, but by the 18th Century, Marie Camargo of the Paris Opera Ballet wore the first flats, allowing her to perform leaps that would have been impossible in the shoes of the day. Her shoes were secured with ribbons at the ankles, and they incorporated pleats under the toes to be able to execute turns and extend the feet more fully.  In 1795, Charles Didelot invented the shoe that allowed dancers to STAND on their toes before leaping up. These light and airy leaps helped achieve a more ethereal look. Audiences loved it! Choreographers looked for more and more opportunities for their dancers to fly!

The true pointe shoe developed in later years through the 19th Century, with ballerina Marie Taglioni dancing La Sylphide en pointe, and the rest is history. Taglioni's grave is an homage to the dance with ballerinas leaving toe shoes at the site. It's the mecca of ballet dance.

Today, the pointe shoe sole is constructed of a single piece of leather attached to the shoe with special glue, and stitched along the edges for reinforcement. The toe box is a hard, enclosed area that holds the dancer's toes, with the front end of the box flattened so the dancer can balance and spin on a little flat surface. Often, dancers score the bottom of the shoe with a knife (if they are not scored already) to provide traction, and less slippage.

Of course, there is a tremendous price to pay for all that flight! Most dancers have damaged feet. It's very hard to continue to put pressure and weight on such a small area without eventual, detrimental effect. But, nonetheless, if you ask a ballerina to "be careful, don't spend so much time en pointe, take care of your feet", you might as well be talking to the wall. The dance is a magnificent obsession!