The Breaking Pointe

By Isabella Quintero

Ballet dancers appear so effortless as they pirouette across the stage with their graceful yet sharp movements, but the reality is so far from that. Despite the way they appear to be dancing with ease as you sit and watch from the audience, those dancers are using just about every single muscle in their bodies to keep their legs straight, their toes pointed, making sure that every movement is controlled, sharp, pretty, and graceful. Dancing on your toes while they’re trapped in a little wooden box decorated in pretty pink fabric makes it even harder to get all of those intricate moves perfect.

I understand that dance is a very competitive and physical sport, but I also believe that there are certain aspects of the culture behind dance that are extremely unhealthy and result in ugly outcomes for many dancers. Using competition to justify the hardships that dancers go through, is just brushing over the detrimental aspects that no one seems to think about unless you're told outright or seeing it up close.

Many people don’t consider dance to be a sport, in fact, it’s become an argument constantly brought up by people who compare it to other sports like football or basketball. Yes, dance is an art. Dancers are artists, but that does not mean that they are not athletes as well.

The strength and determination, as well as the hours and hours of sweaty hard work that goes into learning a dance and getting it perfect would most likely make a football player run away crying. Dance is a different kind of sport, but it is one nonetheless.

From the moment I first saw my older sister dance in her pointe shoes, it became my biggest goal, the one thing I strived to accomplish. I wanted to dance in pointe shoes more than anything else in the world. I watched the older girls dance at the studio in absolute awe of the strength in their legs and how their feet never faltered. The way their arms were so delicate and graceful, yet sharp and strong. I fell so head over heels in love with ballet, watching it and dancing it myself.

It was only when I turned 10 years old and I finally got to wear my own pair of pointe shoes that I realized how difficult it was going to be to live up to that dream. To live up to the older girls I idolized who wore these delicate death traps on their feet like it was nothing.

Photo credits: Pointe Magazine.

Pointe shoes are made mostly out of an interior of cardboard and an exterior of satin. The tip of the shoe is a hard box packed with cardboard, fabrics, and paper which are hardened pointe shoe pastes, a glue-like substance. The shank of the shoe is made from layers of cardboard, the sole of the shoe typically leather. This contraption is then covered in pretty pink delicate looking satin. Once bought, satin ribbons are tied on to the sides of the shoe, along with an elastic along the back-middle in order to keep the shoe snug.

I remember sewing the ribbons and elastic into my first pair of shoes myself, amateur stitches that would eventually rip, and my fingers aching with how many times I pricked myself with the needle. I bet if I still had them I could find little stains of blood from my fingers on them.

Not only was it difficult to dance in pointe shoes but the process of breaking them in each time I got a new pair was a surprise I was not ready for. Dancing in stiff new pointe shoes does absolutely nothing for your dancing ability, so you have to break them in enough for them to be more flexible and keep up with your movements.

You have to bend and push and snap while you're all sweaty, tired and sore from hours of practice. You need to stand on the shoes until they literally break, your toes straining against the cardboard box at the tip, with only a light layer of the toe pad, and occasional tape separating them from the shoe. Even after all of that, they still often won’t fit your feet perfectly.

All of this to say that some practices and maybe a performance later and you already need a new pair, which cost roughly $100, although I've seen them range from around $65-$170. Professional dancers go through around 100-200 pointe shoes per season. That’s a big check.

So while yes, the idea of becoming a “real” ballerina was exciting to me for so long, the act of actually dancing in pointe shoes is what I could only describe as excruciating. Of course, after dancing in them for an amount of time you get used to them, but they never stop hurting completely, and they never stop damaging your feet.

Being a dancer myself since I was three years old, I have so much love for every style of dance there is, but it’s also let me experience first hand the negatives that come with it. Now me personally, I've been really lucky with my dancing environment but other dancers haven’t been that lucky and have endured the brutal competitive environments that tear down your self-esteem with one judgemental look.

Over my years of dancing I've had so many positive memories that I constantly look back on and smile, remembering the good moments that I love so dearly and hope to continue having. I've made some of my best friends through dance from the long hours that we spend together basically every day of the week, somehow never getting sick of each other.

My dance teachers quickly became my idols, the people I look up to, and who I feel comfortable around enough to open up to them whenever the weight of everything else gets too heavy. I’ve been incredibly lucky to have a relatively healthy experience in dancing, of course coming across some not so healthy habits that I've picked up and still work on letting go of. However, so many other dancers live every day either unaware of their unhealthy habits, or very aware and struggle to dance while losing love for it everyday.

One of the major habits I work everyday to squash from my mind is comparison. So many dancers struggle with comparing themselves to professional dancers, dancers they see online, or even their peers. My mind, and so many others', is constantly screaming at me “do better,” “be better,” “this isn’t enough.” While I believe a certain amount of expectations are acceptable in any sport, constantly bringing yourself down and beating yourself up over any little misstep is not healthy and ultimately just leads to loss of love for that sport.

The immense amount of pressure that dancers have to be the best and to look the part does not only affect them mentally but also physically. The mental toll can drive them to obsessive control of their diets and disordered eating habits. Making lists and weighing yourself after every meal might seem harmless at first, but this obsession with weight and how flat your stomach is not the healthy version of dieting, and instead can lead to very serious eating disorders that are so difficult to come back from, especially when you’re still stuck in the same environment with the same amount of pressure to be skinny and “perfect”.

Another major reason for comparison is the exclusivity in dance stores regarding clothes sizes and colors. Misty Copeland, an American ballet dancer for the American Ballet Theater (ABT), as well as the first African American woman to become a principal dancer at the ABT, uses her platform as a well-known dancer to speak out against injustices in the dance industry.

Misty Copeland posing for a feature celebrating Black History Month. Photo credits: Atlanta Ballet Center for Dance Education

This includes pushing dance stores to incorporate more diverse ballet slippers and pointe shoes. Misty even posted online a video of her pancaking her own pointe shoes with her skin-colored foundation, revealing that she does this for each pair of pointe shoes she buys, taking a lot of time and money considering how many shoes she goes through in one month alone.

“I do this because it's so important in ballet, in the aesthetic that we create a long, through line that continues on from the tips of our toes to our head and it should all be the same color,” said Copeland. In the video she posted, expressing how she has often felt excluded because of the lack of diversity in the world of ballet.

If you’re interested in hearing her talk more about her journey in diversity through pointe shoes, here’s a link to the video on Misty Copeland’s Instagram page, as well as many more videos where she talks about injustices and what should happen in order to fix those issues.

Despite the hardships that can come with committing to being a dancer, Copeland’s mission demonstrates why people put so much effort into fitting into these extreme expectations. Dance is beautiful, exhilarating, and fun, and Copeland shows that even those that feel excluded are willing to sacrifice, adapt, and innovate in order to be a part of that experience.

By becoming more aware of your own struggles and unhealthy habits, the road to success suddenly becomes so much more clear, and much more satisfying. Understanding and acknowledging the pressures and toxicity of dance is the first step towards returning to that feeling of wonder I had all those years ago when I first started. Everyone deserves that opportunity.