Pretty Pointes

Part of the teacher training I'm attending this week in Toronto is teaching pointe work to dancers who have just gotten their first pair of pointe shoes.  The training of pointe work is extremely important as it takes a great amount of strength and can be damaging to a student's technique and body if done incorrectly.  We had a pointe shoe fitter from The DanceShoppe in Toronto visit our studio today and give us a presentation on all the new kinds of pointe shoes and new technologies that make pointe shoes today so much more comfortable and workable than shoes of old.  Here are some pictures I took; I know I'm a dancer and biased towards the beauty of classical dance, but aren't they so pretty?!

I used to fit pointe shoes at Contra Costa Dancewear in Walnut Creek, Ca, so I had a great appreciation for our presenter and all her knowledge.  The untrained eye may not know how much goes into both creating and wearing pointe shoes, but it is quite a process.  The shoes should fit like a glove, too much room lets feet slide in and out of the shoe, and shoes too tight can result in foot deformations.  Since no two people have the same shape or structure of foot, there need to be a variety of shoes with different features that will support and enhance a dancer's pointe work.  Today's dancer's are much more lucky in the variety of shoes, when pointe work first appeared on stage in the 1830's, dancers would mostly just tightly bind their feet with cardboard and bandages or darn their flat shoes!  You can see in some of these pictures below that today's shoes are made from a variety of cardboard, layers of glue, burlap and satin.  I'd never seen a shoe cut in half, so I was fascinated to see the "guts" of the shoe.  Pretty amazing right?

My favorite (looking anyways, I didn't get to try the shoe on to see how it actually fit my foot) was Principal Princess, a brand I'd never heard of before.  Check out the sole (shank) of the shoe and the inner lining.  Cute!  Interested in learning more about the pointe shoe?  Here's a great website:  http://www.the-perfect-pointe.com/PointeHistory.html

Dancing on pointe is every young dancer's dream, and all dancers have to work hard to become strong enough to get that first pair of shoes.  To me, pointe work can embody all that dance can be: ethereal yet strong, lyrical and grounded, light and graceful but also deep and profound.  In other words, just some of the qualities that make me love dance so much.