the.com/pointe
the art of balancing your entire body on a toenail and smiling
means The technique in ballet of supporting the whole body on the tips of fully extended feet, usually wearing specially reinforced toe shoes called pointe shoes.
from Straight from French pointe, meaning "point" or "tip," which traces back to Latin punctum, "a thing that has been pricked or pierced" (from pungere, "to prick" — the same root that gives us puncture and point). The dance term arrived with the rise of Romantic ballet in the early 19th century, when ballerinas first rose onto their toes to look as though they were floating just off the earth.
- box trick
- The shoe's tip is layered fabric and glue, not wood
- short life
- Pros can destroy a pair in one performance
- slow start
- Dancers train years before earning their first pair
- silk debut
- Marie Taglioni pioneered it onstage in 1832
- toe load
- Tips bear pressure exceeding a dancer's full weight
pointe shoes — ballet footwear worn by dancers to perform on the tips of their toes, invented in early 1800s
pointe du hoc — cliff on normandy coast, france, stormed by us rangers on d-day june 6 1944