Everything you wanted to know about pointe shoes, but were afraid to ask.... "how pointe shoes are sewn in the Bolshoi Theater" How pointe shoes are made

Scratch the sole if you need to keep the shoes from slipping. This can be done with a metal sponge or any abrasive tool. Thanks to this, the adhesion of pointe shoes to the floor will improve. You can also make deep scratches with scissors.

Soften the folds of fabric under the toe of the pointe shoes so that the pointe shoes do not make any extra sounds. The fabric folds under the sole at the toe area, and the folds that result from this can make sounds when you dance. Some dancers hit their pointe shoes on a hard surface to soften the folds.

• Be aware that such training can accelerate the wear of pointe shoes.

Remove the fabric from the toe of your pointe shoes for better grip on the floor. Pointe shoes can slip on the floor, so for better grip, some dancers cut the satin from the toe or sew an overlay to the toe.

Remove the hard area from the heel area. On the heel of pointe shoes there is a firm area that helps pointe shoes keep their shape. If it bothers you and you want to make pointe shoes softer, remove it. This can be done by hand or with pliers.

Do pointe exercises. When the preparation is completed, stand on pointe shoes so that the pointe shoes sit on your legs. Try bending pointe shoes, doing a few grand plies, rolling from pointe to half toes.

Let's try to figure out what ballet shoes are made of - pointe shoes, or as the ballerinas themselves call them "fingers".

To date, firms that manufacture ballet shoes enough. And the ballerinas of the Bolshoi Theater have a choice.

So, in front of you are 4 pairs of "fingers". These are Chinese SanSha, Japanese Chacott, shoes made in the workshops of the Bolshoi Theater and American Geynor Minden.

It is the latter that will be discussed today.

I will allow myself lyrical digression. Unlike many, for almost 30 years I have been dancing exclusively in Bolshoi ballet shoes, made to my measurements. Tried different ones. Of all the variety, except for the native "fingers" I feel great in Capezio. It's not like dancing in Geynor, I just can't walk. Although they are loved by many leading ballerinas. But as they say - the taste and color.

Let's continue.
Shoes initially have a curved arch. For some, this may be convenient. To me - no.

Piglet shoes are a very important part, if not the main one. After all, it is on it that the ballerina stands. I remember I was surprised when I came to the Bolshoi and saw pointe shoes with a heel no more than a five-ruble coin.
Now nickels are twice, or even three times more. It is considered more comfortable to stand on a large, wide heel. Maybe.

Shoes without straps. Each ballerina sews as she pleases. Since I didn’t intend to use shoes, I didn’t sew on ribbons either.

In profile, the leg in the shoes looks quite nice, but in full face - the folds become visible. Knowing how the Bolshoi shoes are arranged and what they are made of, I wanted to know what ballet shoes are made of in America. By the way, Geynor, in my opinion, has two drawbacks. It’s hard to get on your toes in them (it was always interesting why) and you need to sew an elastic band to the heel of the shoes so that the heel does not come off.

To begin with, we rip off a penny. On Geynor, it is sewn separately, unlike other shoes. Under the fabric ... plastic and a piece of thin foam rubber !!!

Now I seem to understand why in many ballet photographs the nails are affected by the fungus. Legs, fingers in plastic DO NOT BREATHE!!!

We take out the insole, which by the way is also made of synthetic material.

On the reverse side is glued thin foam rubber.

We look into the shoes and there ... Also plastic. That is why it is difficult to stand on half toes. The plastic is quite hard and hard to bend.

There is a thin film of foam rubber under the heel between the fabric and the plastic insert in the shoe.

So the shoes from Geynor look without plastic filling. The inner fabric is also synthetic!

Such is the "beauty" I have left from the right or left shoes. Dismantled almost for parts.

The only natural material is the sole. It's suede.

And now ... we put on spare parts separately.
Just to understand how the foot feels inside the pointe shoe.
Looks terrible. Hence the calluses, bones and everything else. Terribly uncomfortable.

Even in such a horizontal position, the foot does not fit into the block. Of course, you can choose a suitable fullness, but still it will not sit perfectly.

Getting on your toes is not a problem. But again, not very convenient.

As a matter of fact, now you know how and what Geynor Minden ballet shoes are made of.

Before starting work on shoes, I would advise you to look at photos of pointe shoes, pay attention to their design and how they sit on the ballerina's leg.

The doll's legs must be molded taking into account the shape of the shoes, i.e. with a narrow and chopped off toe (pyatak), you should also remember the eversion of the foot, characteristic of ballerinas. Pointe shoes come in different types, with different sizes of pennies, heels, here you will be guided by your plan.

Necessary materials:
1. Atlas
2. Satin ribbons in satin color
3. Thin cardboard for shoe soles
4. Glue "Moment" transparent
5.Threads
6. Tracing paper for patterns
7. Acrylic paints

1. We start work on pointe shoes with a pattern. For each doll, the pattern will be different depending on the size and position of the legs. I do not build a pattern, but simply apply it to the doll and model it along the leg.

Of course, the pattern turns out to be somewhat conditional, but some points need to be determined quite accurately. It is necessary to determine the cutout of the shoe, the size of the glass (the so-called toe of pointe shoes) and the ratio of the front and heel. Shoes are made with a seam on the side, there is no functionality in this, but we try to get closer to the original. We put seam allowances in the pattern, make more of them from below and on the penny, then cut off the excess, for a cut of 3-4 mm.

2. We cut out the details and sew the side seams, they should also be stitched.

All seams must be ironed out. We leave the heel unstitched, then you need to carefully glue the allowances on the cutout of the pointe shoes.

Such blanks should turn out.

3. We fasten the heel, before doing this, it is advisable to first baste and try on the doll, this will avoid mistakes.

4. After we stitched the heel, the part is completely ready

And you can start collecting pointe shoes. We put the heel and toe on the glue, then carefully glue the cutout of the shoe with glue with a pin and finally glue it to the leg.

The fabric should be very close to the leg.

6. We make out the sock, small folds are laid at the pointe shoes.

Cut off excess allowances.

7. Here is what you should get.

8. I cut out the soles from thin cardboard, I recommend using cardboard from women's tights, it is thin and plastic enough to avoid creases. You should pay attention to the shape of the sole, because we try to achieve the most similarity with real ballet shoes. It is necessary to glue the sole as carefully as possible so that it does not deviate anywhere from the atlas.

9. The sole can be painted acrylic paint. If it is made in more than one tone, but for example, on the heel and at the toe darker or lighter, then it will turn out more naturally.

Each coat of paint should dry well.

Now the ballet shoes are ready and your doll can dance on her toes!

I love it when some specific things are told in an accessible language, and vice versa, I can’t digest people who talk about their specialized knowledge from the point of view that they are not available to anyone else. The vumn.ru forum became a disturber of my calmness: I wandered there by chance in search of what a “jump” is. I did not find the answer, but the dialogue was amusing. The girl asks there if it is possible to stand on pointe shoes at the age of 25+ (what to ask - take it and do it!). Women immediately ran up (not to be confused with women), those who always know everything and a couple of ballerinas. The latter began to discuss that they had been pulling climbs since childhood, and in general, this lady cannot raise this leg higher than 90 degrees ...

Firstly, who told you that a dancer understands something in teaching ballet or is he familiar with the technology he was taught with? But who ever said that actors, athletes or singers are such smart people that it is worth listening to their opinion? Secondly, I don’t understand, I like it - study, try, work, achieve. Unfortunately, in our country we don’t have such a mania for different hobbies: in the states, in Europe, in China there are many amateur schools where people seriously (otherwise it’s impossible in the classics) do ballet for themselves (and not in order to perform). Why not? There are far slingo mothers (you know those with small children who wear them in a special scarf), who are right with the sling and the child and stand by the stick. Thirdly, buy pointe shoes, and then we'll see...

How to choose?
Of the 15 last parameters, most (nickle, closeness, insole type, cutout and lace) are what distinguish pointe models from one another (for example, Capezio has more than 10 of them, Grishko and R-Class have about 15, Bloch has 20 models ). But for each of them, you can choose the size, fullness, and stiffness of the insole (and, sometimes, the material and color).

Most manufacturers have visual ways to choose a model, and brand stores have a pointe fitter specialist.

Can you wear?

When new pointe shoes are bought, unlike sneakers, you can’t put them on right away. They need to be prepared. With sneakers, in general, everything is too easy: there are even laces and they are already inserted! And to begin with, ribbons are sewn to pointe shoes, and not just anywhere, but at the top of the instep, in the place where support is needed - it is individual for each, so the ribbons go separately. Although there is another simple way: the place is selected by a bent heel.

Of course, they are sewn by hand, with a thread and a needle, then they are cut to length and melted (sometimes the cut is treated with varnish or glue) so that they do not stick out and crumble. An elastic band is optionally sewn on, which holds the heel and the lace is tightened.

Now they can be fixed on the leg. But that's not all: if we talk about professionals and experienced amateurs, they prepare pointe shoes more carefully.

The upper fabric is sometimes cut off from the penny, sewn with threads around the perimeter or a leather overlay is glued, beaten with a hammer to remove the corners.

The box is kneaded (the manufacturer says that this is not necessary, and these are relics of the past, but here, as they say, all felt-tip pens are different in taste and color - it is important to bring the box to the desired degree of softness so that it is comfortable), for this they knock on it with a hammer , get up with their heels on top, clamp the door ... in general, they scoff as they want.

The insole is bent, especially in the heel area, sometimes it is torn off in the upper part from the sole (as I understand it, for a more aesthetic look on the half-toes), give it a shape and simply soften it by itself.
Some professionals soak pointe shoes in a special way, or rosin inside, or ... in general, everyone has their own ritual, but an amateur is up to them, like to Zakharova ...

And now it's possible?

Now it's too early to put on pointe shoes. It will look like this, although it should be different.

And the point here is not that the sides are ridiculous and unaesthetic. You simply cannot dance with such legs: there will be either a fracture or a serious deformity in the ankle area. This is about how to climb a steep hill, put on skis and push off - hypothetically, you can completely reach the foot, but an adequate person without minimal training will not do this.

In order to en pointe you with your foot, which is usually in the L position, you need to do I, that is, straighten it from a position of 90 'to 180+. Adult stubborn lovers use such a thing for this, and in childhood it stretches easier.

In addition to stretching the lift, it also needs to be pumped. This muscle is developed in an ordinary person sooooo weakly. There are dance exercises Plie and Releve.

What it is? Grasp something, stand sooo straight, as much as you can, connect your heels, and spread your toes apart (something like V), and now squat without turning off your ass, as if you swallowed a crowbar, without lifting a single millimeter of your feet off the floor . Squat as low as you can - that's Plie.

And now, without lifting your fingers from the floor and without filling up your foot, climb onto your tiptoes (half-toes). Now you just lift your heel off the floor, go higher, higher, and more, now push your heel into your leg - this is Releve.

Repeat 1000 times.

And here it is also important not to forget to pump up your fingers. Yes, yes, those very toes that a healthy sane person does nothing with, but football players, for example, train them. They don’t do anything for this: they do push-ups on them, move loads, walk up the stairs, swing with an expander.

As with any activity, 10,000 hours will make you an expert. Swing and pull, pull and swing ... Good ballet legs for a normal uninitiated person look, to put it mildly, ugly.

These are beautiful ballet legs: there is a pumped-up instep, which makes the foot huge (but strong, and it looks beautiful in pointe shoes), as well as X-legs (what is called hyperextension) - especially appreciated by ballerinas: in the photo below on the right the legs of a normal person, on the left - the legs of a human dancer.

And these are the feet of the world-famous ballerina Svetlana Zakharova, who is idolized by almost all ballerinas (she really is beautiful, beautifully built and artistic) it would be great if she were not an ardent supporter of PZhiV.

But this, of course, does not threaten mere meters :)

And is it safe at all?

Pointe shoes(from French les pointes des pieds - “fingertips”; also toe shoes, sometimes pegs or helmets, colloquial) - women's ballet shoes, an integral part of women's dance in classical ballet. Pointe shoes allow the dancer to take a position with a fulcrum on the toes of the outstretched foot of one or both legs (French sur les pointes), which makes the pose less casual and more sublime.

Having emerged as a means of figurative expression, with the advent of the era of romanticism, they were originally used for the roles of fairies, goddesses and other magical creatures in order to emphasize their unearthly origin - while "mere mortals" were given a half-finger dance (French sur le demi-pointes) or in typical heeled shoes. In the ballet of the times of academism, social differences were also emphasized between noble heroines and their environment of ordinary origin.

Pointe shoes of the 19th century are very similar in shape to ballroom and street shoes for women. late XVIII- 1st half of XIX century, when, after the revolution, French women practically abandoned heels, which became a symbol of dangerous belonging to the aristocracy, in favor of ancient naturalness. Like ballroom shoes, they were made of silk satin, flat leather soles, with a rectangular toe. The "Greek fashion" of the 1790s was also picked up by the dancers: Maria Medina, and other artists after her, went on stage in chitons and sandals, preaching freedom. At the same time, dancers like Mademoiselle Parisot continued to dance in tight, low-heeled shoes (however, without the buckles, bows, flowers, and other Rococo decorations).

In 1821, in London, on the stage of the Royal Theater, Bias performed, decorating her dance with separate poses on her fingers. The lithograph by J.-F. Waldeck, in which the ballerina is depicted in a confident pose on her fingers in the 5th position.

In October 1830, Maria Taglioni (1804-1884) showed a dance on pointe in the ballet "God and the Bayadere", on March 14 of the following year she made her debut in "Zephyr and Flora" by Didlot, and exactly a year later, on March 12, 1832, she already danced confidently on pointe in his father's ballet "La Sylphide", finally establishing the supremacy of romanticism on the stage.

In 1846, Sophia Fuoco's finger technique so impressed Paris that the young Italian, "brilliant in the so-called pointe shoes", was given the nickname La Pointue.

The first Russian ballerina to start dancing en pointe is Didelo's student Avdotya Istomina (1799-1848), who danced in, among other things, the ballet Zephyr and Flora.

Gradually, pointe dancing became an indispensable element of classical ballet - to such an extent that in many editions of old classical ballets, characteristic, demi-characteristic and even grotesque parts (for example, the fairy Carabosse from Konstantin Sergeev's Sleeping Beauty, 1964) were completely transferred from heels and soft shoes to pointe shoes. This trend reached its maximum with choreographer Yuri Grigorovich, who almost completely removed the heeled dance from the stage of the Bolshoi Theater, replacing the characteristic suites in The Nutcracker (1966), Swan Lake (1969) and other ballets with classical variations on pointe shoes with some national flavor.

Manufacturing

In the second half of the XIX century. a round cork, 2 fingers thick, was inserted into ballerinas' shoes. The relatively expensive cork at the beginning of the 20th century was replaced by a special starch glue - all the inner layers of the “box” or “glass” (the part of the shoe into which the toes are placed) are impregnated with it, thereby achieving the degree of rigidity required by modern finger technique, reached extraordinary virtuosity in the 2nd half of the 20th century. The slightly oval "patch" of the pointe shoe, due to which stability is achieved in various poses, is flattened.

Since pointe shoes must fit snugly to the foot without causing discomfort, ballerinas, if possible, prefer to order shoes to an individual measure, rather than picking them in a store to fit from an existing model range. In Soviet times, such large theaters as the Bolshoi or Mariinsky had their own theater workshops that made shoes individually for each artist - while the ballerina was assigned to a certain master who memorized the wishes and anatomical features of each artist, and could make shoes that did not require additional fitting.

After taking measurements, a typical shoe block is made of wood, exactly following the contours of the foot. In the cutting shop, the cut is cut to the desired size (most often from pale pink satin), a blank is sewn from it along the block. Then a small, smaller than the size of the foot, sole made of thick leather is nailed to the block. The satin blank is put on the block with the wrong side up, and several layers of burlap and tare fabric are glued onto it. After sewing the workpiece with a strong thread and cutting off excess material, it is removed from the shoe, turned right side out and put on the shoe again, this time secured with small nails, after which the entire shoe is carefully beaten with a hammer so that it repeats the shape of the shoe.

After removing the shoe from the block, a multilayer insole made of leather or cardboard is glued into it, with a narrow rectangular plate of hard cardboard inserted inside, which will help maintain the foot in an upright position. To emphasize the curve of the foot and give the opportunity to reach the fingers, the sole is given a curved shape. After the sole with the insole is glued, the shoe is again pulled over the block and placed in a drying cabinet - an oven with a temperature of 60-70 °. A day later, when the glue has completely hardened, the pointe shoes are removed from the oven. then a cotton insole is placed inside each shoe, with which the foot will come into contact.

On the day one master can make 6-7 pairs of handmade shoes, a small team is able to produce about two thousand pairs per month.

Some of the most reputable manufacturers of pointe shoes are the English company Freed of London, founded in 1929 and producing about 700 pairs daily, and the Australian Bloch, which has existed since 1931. The Royal Ballet and New York City Ballet companies use Freed shoes: the first buys about 12,000 pairs annually, spending about £ 250,000 on them, the second tries to stick to a budget of $ 500,000. Australian Ballet purchases Bloch shoes.

Also in great demand among modern ballerinas are the shoes of the American company Gaynor Minden, founded in New York in 1993. Unlike traditional glued pointe shoes, they are based on a glass molded from polymer materials - such shoes do not need to be “broken” before being put on, they can be washed, their insoles do not break, and they are more durable. Thanks to the use of modern technology, they support the foot better, allowing you to spend less muscle effort during the descent and ascent, so they are not recommended to be used too often in order to avoid weakening the muscles. For the same reason, Gaynor Minden pointe shoes are not allowed to be used in some of the leading ballet schools, since taking on part of the work, they do not allow the necessary muscular apparatus to form correctly.

Usage

In order to be able to dance in ready-made shoes, ballerinas do a lot of different manipulations with them: they sew ribbons-strings to them and different kinds rubber bands that prevent the instep from “falling out”, and the shoes themselves from slipping off their feet; a hard “glass” (“box”) is beaten with a hammer from a layer of glued fabrics so that it does not press anywhere and does not rub fingers; cut off the satin “patch” and wrap it with thread or crochet it (there are also non-slip pads that can be glued directly to the “patch”), make small cuts on the insole with a knife or grater. While some ballerinas prefer to work barefoot, most wear silicone pads and other liners inside to help prevent blisters.

From numerous rises to the fingers during the dance and descent from them, the shoes gradually soften and become loose. Their service life depends on the intensity of the load: for example, a ballerina performing leading role in a ballet performance, with a large number of duets, variations and other exits, he can change several pairs of shoes in an evening. In addition, for performances such as Giselle, where each act requires its own technique and expressiveness, the artists prepare different shoes for each act.

In order not to slip while moving, earlier, when the floor of the stage and rehearsal rooms was wooden, rosin and ordinary water were used for better grip - a garden watering can was an indispensable attribute of rehearsal rooms. There was even a proverb: "He who does not know how to water - he does not know how to dance." After wood was ubiquitous in place of stage linoleum, artists began to use sugary sodas that were sticky when dried, such as Coca-Cola.