how do pointe shoes help you dance on ur toes???

Question

do they jis make it so its easier?

oh sorry i had no idea so i asked

Answer 1

the box of the pointe shoe shapes and supports the toe/ball of foot area, some dancers with strong feet dont particulary need pointe shoes but it gives the support the anckles and arch and gives a clean look to the foot

Answer 2

It's actually more about the strength and flexibility of the dancer's foot and body than it is about the shoes. A dancer who dances en pointe for a while can also releve into full pointe in her bare feet (I've done it, seen it done many times.) It's not comfortable and it's not like she can then do all the myriad of steps she can do when she's wearing the shoe which gives her more support, but she can go up onto full pointe in her bare feet.

A pointe shoe is made of glue and fabric hardened into a shape that has a flat tip to give the dancer a place to balance on (not a big place, but a place nonetheless). The shoe is so stiff at first that when a dancer tries to go onto demi pointe it's a struggle. There's a leather sole to the shoe that's heavily reinforced and dancers spend a long time breaking the shoe in, getting it just soft enough that she can flex it while it's still strong enough to give her that extra bit of support to do all the steps she needs to do en pointe.

And it HURTS. It hurts like mad. Dancers do all sorts of things to help pad the shoe like taping their toes together with athletic tape, wrapping their toes in lambwool padding and putting on preshaped gel pads (think of the gel pads used in push up bras. Now think of the same thing shaped to fit around your toes. Bingo.) Even with the best padding in the world, it still hurts, because a dancer is balancing all her body weight onto the tips of her toes, and the shoe has a stiff box (the part around the toes) meant to help her maintain her releve, but it does so at a cost.

The very first pointe shoes used were made out of silk and the only reinforcement they had was being darned with heavy thread to give the dancer's foot just a tiny tiny bit more support than a plain silk slipper would give. The dancer's did only a very few short steps en pointe before coming down again. As time went by, the shoes became more and more stiff and supportive and the dancers did more and more movements en pointe.

Hope this helps!

Answer 3

They make it easier, but not easy, by any means. The toe of the shoe is hardened with kind of like starch or plaster to make a rigid box under the satin; the box is called (appropriately enough) the toe box. You wrap your toes with lambswool and/or apply a foam toe pad to cusion your toes before you put them into the shoe so that the hard box doesn't hurt your toes as much (it still hurts, though!) and then you tie the ribbons tightly around your ankle to give your ankle strength and stability - kind of like hightop sneakers do for B-ball players. The tip of the toe box is flat and provides a stable surface for balancing on, but you still have to have extraordinary muscle control in your feet, ankles, knees, and legs, and extraordinary balance in your core body, in order to roll up "en pointe" with any sort of grace and stay there long enough to execute any steps with any sort of agility. My hat is off to all ballerinas out there. Hope this helps.

Answer 4

it doesn't make it easier in any sense. if you tried to stand on your toes minus the pointe shoes, you'll fall straight over. with the poitne shoes, there's a flat surface that you can balance on after a lot of practice.

Answer 5

point shoes have a box at the end that allows you to stay on your toes
it isnt really easy but i suppose it is easier to stand on your toes in point shoes vs ballet shoes but you dont stand on your toes in ballet shoes

Answer 6

The tip if flat so when you are balanced on it, you are on a flat surface. There is nothing "easy" about it though.