Pointe Shoes Research Articles

Musculoskeletal Injuries Among Young, Recreational, Female Dancers Before and After Dancing in Pointe Shoes

The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence, number, and distribution of musculoskeletal injuries among young, recreational, female dancers before and after dancing in pointe shoes and to explore possible risk factors. Thirty-one female, nonprofessional ballet dancers, eight to 20 years of age, were recruited from two dance studios in London, Ontario. Participants completed a descriptive questionnaire and reliable examiners performed stress, stability, and laxity tests. The prevalence of instability for nonpointe and pointe groups was 0% and 8% for the knee and 17% and 3% for the ankle, respectively (a nonsignificant difference). The mean number of painful sites was 1.3 (SD = 1.9) and 2.9 (SD = 2.1) for nonpointe and pointe groups, respectively (p = 0.04). The only variable that, in part, predicted the number of painful sites was the number of years of having danced ballet. The generalizability of these results is limited by the small sample size. Additional prospective research with larger samples, inclusion of dancers who are just beginning to dance in pointe shoes, and consideration of level of exposure and the intensity of both dancing and other physical activity is indicated before prevention programs can be planned and tested.

Pointe Shoes: Fitting and Selection Criteria

Pointe Shoes: Fitting and Selection Criteria

Consuming the Ballerina: Feet, Fetishism and the Pointe Shoe

(2000). Consuming the Ballerina: Feet, Fetishism and the Pointe Shoe. Australian Feminist Studies: Vol. 15, No. 31, pp. 81-90.

Leaping into the 21st Century: Computer Technologies for Dance

Technology and dance are not strangers to one another. In the seventeenth century, mechanical devices such as changement à vue and cloud machines resulted in a spectacular form of theatre. In the 19th century the development of gas lighting, the pointe shoe and the use of wires had a tremendous impact on dance technique and the performance environment of dance, creating an atmosphere which drew the audience into a fantasy world. More recently, technology has been used to inform the dance world of the realities of the physical demands of dance through electrodes attached to the body and linked to the computer. Information gathered on the use of muscles, stress placed on joints, and cardiovascular measures have increased awareness of how we have taught and how we might teach in the future.

Characteristics of various ballet pointe shoes.

Characteristics of various ballet pointe shoes.

Pressures on the foot in pointe shoes.

This study was designed to determine the relative pressures on the first and second toes and first MTP joint when dancing en pointe, in addition to the variation of these pressures as a function of toe length, foot position, and padding. The first ray always bore the most pressure. Pressures on the second toe varied as a function of toe length and padding. Relevé in the everted position markedly increased first MTP joint pressures. Further research is required to determine whether properly designed padding and positioning of the foot en pointe could decrease the incidence of toe problems in the ballet dancer.

The dancer vs. the management in post‐civil war America

For most of us the stereotyped image of the late nineteenth-century ballerina in America is of a plump, coyly posing foreign superstar. Her hairdo is elaborate and she is squeezed into a tutu and pointe shoes at least three sizes too small. We tend to dismiss these women and their contribution to the progress of dance in this country, yet many of them were well-trained artists from La Scala and other prestigious European academies, working under conditions far more difficult than those faced by today's dancer. Many of these dancers came to America to dance in the ballets in the musical spectaculars that dominated our theater following the Civil War. Devoid of dramatic interest, these productions were accused of being an attenuated thread whereon were strung, like so many clothespins, or pins with no clothes to speak of, the limbs of ... ballet girls.1 These productions exhibited, in fact, a kaleidoscopic spectrum of dance, of which ballet was only one aspect. Stunning stage effects, lavish costumes, and variety acts were all served up together as a theatrical diversion, a soothing antidote for a country recovering from the wounds of the war. Moralists claimed that audiences preferred leg to legitimate theater; the presence of European ballet dancers gave an air of refinement. In the 1860s and 1870s, New York theater managers sailed to Europe to recruit ballerinas to outclass those employed by their competitors. For the danseuse working her way up through the ranks of the various European state opera houses, the American stage presented a unique opportunity: a lack of trained dancers and an abundant

The Pointe Shoe

Over the years, the connection between the pointe shoe and femininity has solidified, propagating a gendered perspective of pointe dancing as exclusively for women dancers. The gendering of the pointe shoe as feminine makes it difficult for men to dance on pointe. However, shifting perceptions that recognize the pointe shoe as a technological site of knowledge production would encourage men, and any body for that matter, to dance on pointe. Utilizing Judith Butler’s ([1990] 1999) concept of gender performativity and Teresa de Lauretis’s (1987) thinking on the technology of gender, I argue that the continuous iteration of ballerinas on pointe has constructed the pointe shoe as a performative gendered technology. Further mobilizing Tim Ingold’s (2004) work on how we understand the world through our feet and Andy Clark and David Chalmers’s (1998) concept of the extended mind, I argue that knowledge is embodied through the pointe shoe from the ground up, shaping not only the dancer’s body and balance but also their self-awareness and cognition. Ultimately, in this article I argue that the possibility to gain knowledge from pointe, through either training or performance, should not be restricted to a socially constructed gender binary to which traditional ballet so closely associates itself.