The History of Ballet

By definition ballet is an artistic dance form performed to music, using precise and highly technical and formalised steps. However, ballet hasn’t always been like this. In this Blog Post, I will be showing you how ballet as we know it today, started with a heeled dancing shoe.

Ballet began as a Court dance in the 15^th Century Italian Renaissance. Ballet at this time was much simpler, with none of the high jumps or fast turns or extreme acts of athleticism that we see in modern ballets today, such as Don Quixote, due to the fact that dancers at this time danced in shoes with small heels.

These court dances were very structured and poised and the footwork was subtle. Ballet was performed in these heeled shoes up until the 1730s. This was because of a ballerina by the name of Marie Camaryo.

Marie was a ballerina at the Paris Opera Ballet (the first Ballet Company and School in the world), and was allegedly the first person to remove the heels from the shoes. This gave dancers the ability to accomplish more difficult things such as higher jumps and better footwork due to the increased range of motion in the feet, essentially creating the first ballet slipper. These new ballet slippers allowed dancers to unlock more steps, leading to an increase in ballet technique, alongside expanding the vocabulary.

Another significant figure in the advancement of Ballet was Charles Didelot in 1796. Charles was a dancer and choreographer with the Paris Opera Ballet. He invented the ‘flying machine’, a stage wiring system that attached wires to the dancer to help them rise onto their toes, setting the trend for making ballerinas appear weightless and ethereal. His invention led to another dancer making her mark in ballet history:

In the 1820s, Amalia Bugnoli was among the first to attempt the task of pointe work without the assistance of wires. However, as she was still dancing in ballet slippers, they offered her no support for pointe work, so rising up on her toe was more of a quick stunt to impress audiences. However, ten years later, another dancer would make it possible.

Marie Taglioni was considered the first ballerina who ever danced en pointe. Her official pointe work debut was in 1832 in the Ballet her father choreographed, ‘La Sylphide’. Her shoes were the same ballet slipper all other dancers wore, except that she had put a little bit of darning on the tips of her shoes and around the sides of her toes to reinforce the shoe and give her more support. She also attached ribbons around her ankles, which dancers do to this day.

Significant changes were also happening in Italy in the late 19^th Century. Italian shoemakers were beginning to experiment with the construction of the pointe shoe. They began making the shoes with a hardened, flattened platform and a reinforced toe box, constructed from layers of fabric or pasteboard. These changes allowed dancers to expand the steps they were able to do and increase the vocabulary.

These new and improved pointe shoes led to incredible feats of skill, such as the 32 fouettes in 'Swan Lake', to be performed by Pierana Legnani. However, for legendary ballet dancer, Anna Pavlova, the support in these shoes was still not enough, and so in the 20^th Century, she added a stiff piece of leather into the sole of the shoe, which would later become the shank of the modern pointe shoe. She also hardened even more and widened the platform for better balance.

Due to these alterations to pointe shoes, she is known as the inventor of the modern pointe shoe. This amended shoe also once again led to an increase in harder ballet steps, better technique and an increased vocabulary of steps.

Modern pointe work is also now not also limited to just female dancers. Many male dancers are gradually being permitted to learn pointe, making Ballet a more inclusive place. Modern pointe shoes are also now being made in a variety of colours, not just the standard pink, further increasing the inclusivity of ballet.

In summary, due to the inventions and dedication of talented ballet dancers over several years, Ballet and pointe work has advanced from a simple Court dance of structured and poised movement, to modern Ballets which are often still poised and elegant, but can also be explosive and fast, and both styles require immense athleticism. As Ballet has evolved, the need for better shoes has also evolved, creating the need for a better, more supportive shoe, leading to pointe.

Thank you for reading!

-By CSD Student, Heidi H

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