Gaynor Minden pointe shoes
Photo ©Gaynor Minden
Heather Bloom
04 Jul 2024
Ballet’s origins date back over half a millennia ago to 15th-century Renaissance Italy. Performed as a 'court dance' during extravagant parties for the aristocracy, dancers wore formal heeled shoes, ornately decorated and difficult to move in.
Marie Anne Cupis de Camargo
Image Nicolas Lancret
Paris Opera Ballet dancer, Marie Camargo rocked the ballet world by removing the heel of her shoe to create a flat slipper that allowed her to jump, turn and dance in a new unrestricted way.
Charles Didelot's flying machine
Image: Unknown
Now that dancers had the capacity to move with greater ease, the complexity of choreography advanced beyond the grand jeté and into the stratosphere. Choreographer Charles Didelot took things higher with his rope and pully operated 'flying machine' that lifted dancers up onto their toes giving them an ethereal floating appearance on stage. This aesthetic was later replicated during the Romantic era with the development of the pointe shoe.
Rising up onto the tips of her toes in Armand Vestris’ La Fée et le Chevalier, Italian ballerina Amalia Brugnoli wore an early version of the satin pointe shoe we know today. During this time the ballet aesthetic was coveted by fashionable ladies who often wore leather ballet flats as daywear. Proving ballet-core has always been on-trend!
Marie Taglioni is widely credited as the first ballerina to dance en pointe in a pair of ballet shoes that were structured to retain their shape. However, this incarnation of pointe shoe provided little support to the dancer so rising en pointe was brief. Showcased in the debut of Filippo Taglioni’s La Sylphide (Marie’s father) at the Paris Opera Ballet, Taglioni's pointe shoes heralded a new era of fast-paced and fancy footwork.
Legend has it that in 1842 a group of balletomanes bought a pair of Marie Taglioni’s ballet slippers after her final performance in St. Petersburg, cooked and ate them. Accounts vary, but the slippers are rumoured to have been sold for somewhere between 200 – 1000 Russian roubles, the equivalent of over $16,000 AUD today. Expertly cooked by a top chef, the shoes were then served in a special sauce and accompanied by many bottles of champagne.
Some of the materials required to make a pointe shoe
Photo Pamela Bond
From the mid-late 19th century, Italian shoemakers began developing the pointe shoe, reinforcing the toe with stiff newspaper, paste, cardboard and layers of fabric. Further strengthened by leather insoles, ballet dancers were able to balance with more ease and for longer, as well as demonstrate multiple pirouettes while executing pointe work. As narrative ballets continued in popularity across the world, the pointe shoe became instrumental in character development, allowing the dancers to show more emotional depth in their performances.
Anna Pavlova, 1926 New Zealand
Photo Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Early 20th-century prima ballerina Anna Pavlova was one of the most famous dancers of her time. In addition to dancing some of the most coveted roles in the classical canon, Pavlova’s influence extends to the changing shape of the pointe shoe. With highly arched and tapered feet, dancing en pointe for Pavlova required her to put her entire body weight onto her big toe. To rectify this, the pointe shoe was redesigned with added support and a hardened, flattened box in the toe for stability, bringing the pointe shoe firmly into the 20th century.
Principal Artist Benedicte Bemet, Jewels (Balanchine) 2023
Photo Rainee Lantry
As ballet techniques advanced, choreographers began to move away from the pointe shoe as a symbol of the floating sylph, and experiment with ballet vocabulary and complexity of movement. Since the late 20th century, the pointe shoe has undergone a scientific re-imagining. Constructed using the same technology as other athletic footwear, pointe shoes are able to absorb the shock of a dancer's soaring leaps or countless fouettés and are purpose fit to each individual dancer.
Bloch's tonal pointe shoe range
Photo ©Bloch
Ballet has proven time and time again that it is an evolving art form. While steeped in history and tradition, ballet moves with the cultural environment to advance technique, creativity and attitudes. Pointe shoes are no longer exclusively confined to the feet of female dancers (or should it be that the feet are confined to the pointe shoe?). Male-identifying dancers who have historically only worn pointe shoes for comedic effect (think Bottom, the dancing donkey in Frederick Ashton’s The Dream, or the Ugly Stepsisters in Alexei Ratmansky’s Cinderella) are now adopting pointe shoes for more serious roles and rehabilitation purposes.
Along with changing attitudes towards gender, the pointe shoe has adapted to meet the needs of the broad range of artists in ballet. Once a stock-standard 'ballet pink,' ballet shoes, tights and leotards have expanded in range to include a variety of colours that represent the many different skin tones in ballet and the diverse and exciting future of the art form
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