Pointe shoe unfit to wear in situations other than informal practice or rehearsal. Under moderate usage, a pair of pointe shoes will typically last through ten to twenty hours of wear. For dance students, this often translates into weeks or months of serviceable use from a pair of pointe shoes. Professional dancers typically wear out pointe shoes much more quickly; a new pair may wear out in a single performance. As a result, most professional ballet companies provide shoe allowances for their dancers to defray the cost of frequent shoe replacement. The lifetime of a pointe shoe depends on many factors, including:
Pointe shoe materials, and some will build shoes with customized shanks of varying stiffness and length. Dancers will sometimes wear different pointe shoe models for different performance pieces. In such cases, the choreography often dictates the type of shank required; a lyrical style may call for a softer shoe, while an aggressive style with many turns is more easily performed in a hard, stiff shoe. A pointe shoe employs two fabric ribbons and an elastic band to secure it to the foot. Most of the work of securing shoes to feet is done by the ribbons. The two ribbons wrap around the