My First Pointe Shoes

by Hannah Ross

My mom opened the bright red door to Mark’s Dancewear and I trotted down the stairs with anticipation. This was it: the day I got my first pair of pointe shoes. I thought back to dance class, and how I watched the older girls slip into their soft satin shoes. They snapped the elastic strap on their foot before wrapping the ribbons around their ankle, crisscrossing them twice and tying them in a neat, sturdy slipknot.

The knots had to be sturdy because if a dancer’s ribbons unraveled during class, everyone owed the teacher 20 push-ups. Our teacher demanded perfection. We strove to meet her demands. Before every class, we relevéd 112 times to warm up our legs, then we followed a series of exercises to help soften the box of the shoe. The leather shank of the shoe becomes malleable from the heat and sweat of the dancer, and molds to the foot, supporting the dancer as she spins across the floor.

Pointe shoes didn’t start supporting dancers until almost 200 years after ballet’s invention. In 1795, Charles Didelot constructed the first pair of pointe shoes using a combination of wires, nails, and fabric to make his “flying machine.” The ethereal quality these shoes gave dancers caught on quickly, and choreographers began to include pointe work into their dances. By the late 19th century, new skills and techniques had been developed, and dancing en pointe grew in popularity, but dancers wanted to have shoes without the wires. Marie Taglioni, the dancer credited with first dancing on pointe, modified her satin slippers by attaching a leather sole and darning the sides and toes to help the shoes hold their shape. Today, the box in the toe of the shoe is made of densely packed layers of fabric, cardboard, and paper hardened by glue, and the shank, or sole of the shoe, is leather that varies in thickness, depending on the dancer’s feet.

A dancer’s pointe shoes are more than just delicate satin slippers; they are an extension of herself. Such a vital part of a dancer’s livelihood needs precision by an expert craftsman. Each dancer has one person who makes all her shoes by hand to her specifications: width and strength of the shank, shape of the vamp, size of the box, length of the sole. Most dancers only know their shoemaker by a symbol impressed on the sole, but they trust this symbol absolutely every time they put on a pair of pointe shoes.

The average professional dancer uses 100-120 pairs of pointe shoes a season. At $80 a pair, dance companies spend around $100,000 on shoes per year.

Each shoe must be broken in before the dancer can wear them, otherwise, she won’t be able to perform all the moves correctly, and the stiffness of the shoe will damage her foot. Most people start by breaking the shank. They bend it forwards and backwards, crunching the delicate shape of the shoe. Then they move to the box. There are several ways to break in the box. My dance teacher suggests slamming a door on it several times, while some of my classmates have microwaved theirs. Smashing it with a hammer is also effective. Once the shoe is soft, it can form to the dancer’s foot. Then, in two days, the dancer begins the process again.

By the end of a dance class, pointe shoes are soaked with sweat, and spotted with blood. They’ve been squashed, hit, and bent in all directions.

The shoes aren’t the only ones exhausted after dance. Most practices last over two hours. Two hours of jumping and leaping, of pliés and jetés, of holding my leg at a 135-degree angle until it quivered with fatigue.

Ballet is also mentally taxing. Dance ruined the song "Comptine d'un autre été" (from the 2001 movie, “Amelie”) for me. On days that we practiced for recital, we spent 45 minutes on a 16-count section. We listened to the same song for five months, perfecting every move until my class flowed like a single organism.

My bare feet tapped rapidly on the wood floor next to my sneakers as I waited for Mark to bring a few pairs of shoes from the back room. I tried on a pair of Grishkos, but the box was too narrow. Then I tried on one Bloch and one Freed; the Bloch fit better around my toes, but the heel was too loose. Mark retrieved a smaller size, and I rose en pointe, evaluating how they hugged my foot and how I balanced on the box. These were the ones, the shoes that represented five years of hard work and dedication. Mark held one in both hands, the shining satin catching the light.

Then he bent the shank in half.