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About Pointe > History of Pointe
The great
Russian ballerinas of the day, Kschessinska, Preobrajenska, Karsavina
managed in soft Italian shoes, but other dancers and students required
more support so in Russia the pointe shoe grew quite hard and stiff. Even
today Russian shoes are generally stiffer, and Russian technique calls
for "pouncing" onto pointe more than rolling through, another example
of the interdependence of pointe technique and pointe shoes. Do they pounce
because their shoes will not let them roll, or do they prefer hard shoes
because they like to pounce? Or both?
In any case,
improvements to pointe shoes empowered dancers to do more on pointe, and
thus expanded the ballerina's vocabulary and the art as a whole. Petipa,
as a choreographer, made great use of this new "equipment" for the feet.
He made multiple pirouettes on pointe, sustained balances and promenades
and hops on pointe all obligatory for the ballerina. Petipa's hallmark
Grand Pas requires the ballerina to perform all of the above if
not more.
This is
not to suggest that Petipa's pointe work was virtuosity for its own sake.
It still served a dramatic purpose in characterizing the supernatural,
idealized woman. Odile's thirty-two fouett´s in Swan Lake are meant
to hypnotize Siegfried. The fairies in The Sleeping Beauty use
their pointes to flit about magically. Princess Aurora's awesome balances
in the same ballet show us what a poised and elegant princess she is when
courted by her suitors.
 Because
she could do more on pointe, the ballerina was required to do more on
pointe. As choreography asked more and more of the ballerina she had to
ask more and more of her shoes. The shanks have become harder, the boxes
more and more reinforced, the platform bigger and bigger. It is said that
Pavlova, who was among the greatest of the Russian ballerinas, and who
still danced in relatively soft shoes, is said to have had photographs
of herself retouched to remove some of the tip. Although she was actually
dancing on the newer broader platform, she wished to preserve that Nineteenth
Century Romantic ideal of balancing on the smallest, pointiest little
tip.
Now, at
the end of the Twentieth Century, the ballerina must be extremely versatile.
She must master not only the grueling pointe work of the Petipa Grand
Pas but also the wide range of choreographic challenges that have
accumulated since then. Choreography may call for less verticality, or
for getting up onto pointe from different angles. It may include endless
expressive bourees as in Fokine's The Dying Swan, or smooth, backward
traveling relevés in arabesque as in his Les Sylphides.
It might require shank-breaking forced-arched movements as in some of
Forsythe's work. It might have quirky, weighted steps and a bent supporting
leg on pointe as in some of Tharp's dances. Or, it might demand tremendous
speed and a soft, supple motion rolling through the pointe shoe as in
Balanchine's ballets.
It would
be impossible to perform Twentieth Century dances in Ninteenth Century
shoes, and it is also difficult to do the opposite. In the 1800's in Denmark,
Bournonville choreographed for ballerinas who wore soft Ninteenth Century
shoes. His choreography demands lots of bouncy jumping and brilliant footwork,
but it does not ask for Petipa-style sustained balances and multiple pirouettes
on pointe. When much, much later The Royal Danish Ballet decided to put
some of the Bournonville pirouettes and balances on full pointe instead
of demi-pointe, the ballerinas had a real problem: how to get a shoe soft
enough for the jumps but hard enough for the balances and turns. Some
resorted to wearing a soft pointe shoe on one foot and a hard one on the
other. They would jump with the soft one and use the hard one as the supporting
leg for the balances and pirouettes.
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