As a dancer, the symbolism and form of a pointe shoe hold many personal feelings as well as personal connection for each dancer. Since their creation in the days of Marie Taglioni, they have allowed dancers to float like ethereal beings across the stage. They provide the illusion of impossibly long, slender legs that have become the expectation for the audience, while the expectation for most dancers is more oriented towards the amount of pain they can cause. Pointe shoes are to be blamed for physical pain, blisters, bruises, bunions and sprains, but also in psychological pain by creating another reason for dancers to doubt their bodies, questioning if they are too tall en pointe to pirouette with a partner, if the arches on their feet look too flat, or their toes too round or stubby. From this duality of form. I explored how the beauty and joy I had already found in forms of the body could adorn and challenge the form of the pointe shoe. In this object’s modification, I sought to reframe my own negative connotation in performing arts experience by treating it as a canvas, and viewing it through the exceedingly more positive lens of a visual artist.
see for yourself