When we think about ballet our minds immediately conjure up ethereal visions of dancers performing en pointe work. Yet history tells us that pointe work wasn't derived from the poetic visions of a choreographer, but from a sort of acrobatic and sensational style.
There are records of dancers who performed on their toes as early as the 1720s, but the practice developed in the early 19th century when Italian dancers added spectacular tricks to their shows: in one of them, devised probably by Amalia Brugnoli, performers danced on their toes.
Choreographer Filippo Taglioni and his daughter Marie perfected the style, refining poses and postures. Working for 6 hours a day every day for 6 months, Marie developed great physical power, while retaining her femininity and grace.
Marie reinvented Brugnoli's en pointe move: practicing for long hours to make sure that she didn't look as if she was suffering and she didn’t grimace as she rose to her toes, Marie created a new style.
Taglioni actually danced in a sort of half pointe position as her shoes weren't hard or boxed as today's shoes, but soft with a rounded toe in satin and with ribbons attached to the arch that laced up around the ankle.
They were tapered at the tip and tiny as small shoes allowed dancers to stiff the metatarsal and make it easier to stand on toes (and to hurt their feet as well by dislocating bones...). Taglioni entered the history of ballet by dancing in 1832 in the romantic piece La Sylphide, choreographed by her father and created to highlight her pointe work.
There's currently a digital exhibition at the Toronto-based Bata Shoe Museum (still closed due to Coronavirus), that invites virtual visitors to look at some of the shoes in the museum collection and discover a little bit about the history of pointe shoes via brief explanatory screens.
"On Pointe: The Rise of The Ballet Shoes" opens with the origins of the ballet footwear that was first inspired by fashionable shoes from the 1800s. Ballet shoes looked indeed like the footwear of the time, but when high heels went out of fashion and thin satin flats became the norm in the 19th century, dancers adapted and opted for flat-soled slippers. These shoes were made as straights so there was no distinction between left or right and that eventually became the norm also for ballet shoes.
Rising on the toes became easier with the advent of the pointe shoe: hard-blocked shoes appeared with Anna Pavlova and Carlotta Brianza. Pavlova added to her shoes a leather sole inside the pointe to widen it and make it more solid. In the Unites States she approached Salvatore Capezio who made a custom pair of shoes for her. Her design eventually turned into the standard and, though it wasn't favoured at the beginning as some critics thought that adding a wider leather sole in the pointe was like cheating, it was finally accepted.
The exhibition at Bata Shoe Museum is a short one that makes some very good points that you may want to take into consideration and maybe explore more in future. First of all ballet slippers are the result of artisanal work: they are indeed hand-made (if you're studying shoe design or would like to become a shoemaker, consider also this career) and could be considered as couture products as the shoes destined to performers working for companies are usually made to the specifications of the dancers. The The shoes are made following the highest standards as the toe box and shank must allow the dancer's weight to be transferred to the platform. Dancers go through several pairs of shoes during training, rehearsals and performances: the Bata Shoe Museum has for example got in its archive three pair of worn out ballet shoes that belonged to Veronica Tennant, one of Canada's most famous ballerinas. Tennant needed a different pair of shoes for each act of the performance Onegin (1985).
The exhibition makes another important point, regarding the colour of the shoes: as the foot is considered an extension of the leg, a dancer's slippers usually have to match their skin tone to create a seamless line from leg to toe.
But, historically, 'nude' ballet slippers have been either pink or peach (and we wrongly identify nude with a pale pink tone, while nude should just be something that blends with one's skin and not to two or three shades of pink and maybe beige), even while professional dance companies began to diversify, which meant that dancers with darker skin tones had to dye their shoes or cover them with cosmetics. The limited colour offering meant that dancers with different skin tones had to spend more time than their colleagues dyeing their slippers.
In more recent years there have been companies who have worked on providing shoes for darker skin tones: in 2017, Bloch began to produce their "Cocoa" shade ballet slipper and, a year later, the dance company Ballet Black, which celebrates Black and Asian representation in ballet, collaborated with Freed London to release shade-inclusive ballet slippers. By highlighting this point, the Museum raises questions about diversity and inclusion in ballet.
Ballet and pointe shoes have constantly inspired special exhibition and fashion collections, so discovering a bit more about the story of the iconic slippers and their evolution through a brief exhibition with videos, images of dance icons and shoes may prompt digital visitors to research this topic further, providing them with intriguing inspirations for collections, collaborations and other creative projects.
Comments