The History of Pointe Shoes

Dancers wore heels until the ballet slipper was invented in the 1730s. Then in the late 18th century, a Paris Opéra Ballet choreographer and former dancer named Charles Didelot created a wire rigging system to create the appearance of dancers “flying” over the stage. Featured in his ballet Flore et Zéphire, it marked the first time that the concept of weightlessness was introduced to the ballet and laid the groundwork for pointe dancing. In 1823, the Italian dancer Amalia Brugnoli became the first to dance on pointe during Armand Vestris’ La Fée et le Chevalier. She wore lightly stitched square-toed satin slippers that notably offered very little support while she was up on her toes. Marie Taglioni then became the first person to dance a full-length ballet on pointe in La Sylphide, which was choreographed by her father, Filippo Taglioni. In the latter half of the 19th century, Italian shoemakers developed reinforced pointe shoes that featured stiff boxes fashioned out of newspaper, flour paste, and pasteboard and were reinforced with leather. Around the same time, the new form took off in the Italian ballet. These Italian dancers then introduced pointe to ballerinas in Russia, where the form also became very popular. The dance style then traveled to America in 1910 when Anna Pavlova had her company outfitted in shoes made by the Metropolitan Opera shoemaker Salvatore Capezio. Her order led to the first international pointe shoe brand. Pavlova herself had high arches, so she used pointe shoes with leather soles and a hardened box. Still, her pointe shoes had a rounded toe and narrow vamp, offering limited support. As dancing on pointe became more common and dancers continued to push the boundaries of the form, the demand for more supportive pointe shoes grew. In the 20th century, modern design elements like a flat platform box were added to pointe shoes to give dancers more control and stability. In 1933, Gaynor Minden released a pointe shoe that was inspired by the shock-absorption technology found in athletic shoes. New research into dance medicine has also helped to improve pointe shoes and make pointework safer for dancers in the modern age. New hues have also been rolled out to make pointe shoes more inclusive. Today, many brands make pointe shoes for ballerinas and pointework is still one of the most difficult yet impressive aspects of ballet.