Pointe shoe Pointe shoe A pointe shoe is a type of shoe worn by ballet dancers when performing pointe work. Pointe shoes were conceived in response to the desire for dancers to appear weightless and sylph-like and have evolved to enable dancers to dance "en pointe" (on the tips of their toes) for extended periods of time. They are manufactured in a variety of colors, most commonly in shades of light pink. Women began to dance ballet in 1681, twenty years after King Louis XIV of France ordered the founding of the Académie Royale de Danse. At that time, the standard women's
Areni-1 shoe worn for millennia across a large and environmentally diverse geographic region. According to Pinhasi, the Areni-1 shoe is similar to the Irish "pampooties", a shoe style worn in the Aran Islands up to the 1950s. The shoes are very similar to the traditional shoes of the Balkans, still seen today in festivals, known as Opanci ("Opanke"). When the material was dated by the two radiocarbon laboratories in Oxford and California, it was established that the shoe dates back to 3,500 B.C. This date is a few hundred years older than the date given for the leather shoe found on Ötzi