July 11 2008

Text By Greg Fallis

"A toe shoe is as eccentric as the ballerina who wears it," according to dancer Toni Bentley. "Their marriage is a commitment."

Blame it all on Marie Taglioni. In 1822 she danced the first complete ballet en pointe, thereby changing the nature of ballet and condemning all future ballerinas to a life of foot pain. The human body is not designed to have all its weight placed on the toes, so special shoes had to be developed. The toe shoe is both an engineering marvel and a delight of design; it permits the wearer to engage in the otherwise impossible act of dancing on her toes while masking the astonishing damage it does to the foot behind an exquisite peach-colored satin tube. Dancing en pointe is a voluntary form of torture. Every ballerina, I suspect, has wished for a magic wand that would, at the immediate end of a performance, turn those lovely and excruciating satin toe shoes into a pair of comfortable Chucks.

Part of the art of ballet is for the dancer not to reveal her pain. Part of the art of Chucks is in the soft-sided surcease of pain. The beauty of the dance always translates itself into the beauty of the dancer, and that beauty transcends footwear.