By: Mary Kerner
Before every performance, ballerinas execute a variety of rituals to don their pointe shoes. Some wet the shoe's heel to help it adhere better to their tights, while others place glue inside the heel of the shoe. Preparation of a dancer's pointe shoes may take as long as the entire time allocated to makeup, hairstyling, and costuming.
All those layers of stiff materials interspersed with glue that compose the box lose their body with repeated dancing--and foot perspiration. When the box becomes too soft to perform in, the shoes are either discarded or worn in place of technique slippers for class... After dancers have left the theater, the dressing room floor is strewn with worn-out shoes--some pairs used less than an hour...
Each ballerina has her own method of ensconing her toes in Band-Aids, adhesive tape, or lamb's wool to prevent or protect blisters while dancing for so many hours on the tips of her toes. Although feet toughen and form calluses after years of dancing on pointe, blood from blisters rubbed faw against the stiff box may cake and dry in the toes of pointe shoes. It could seem a prardox that something so beautiful onstage can cause pain, but New York City Ballet choreographer George Balanchine saw no reason why offstage realism should affect an audience's enjoyment of the performance: "Women who dance have ugly feet. Their feet aren't pretty anymore, but they're professional." The man who made ballet for women, a supremacy that had been developing since the day she first stood on her toes, said: "It takes fifteen years to acquire the technique of pointes."
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BALLET PASSION