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:
Bast shoe Bast shoe Bast shoes are shoes made primarily from bast — fiber taken from the bark of trees such as linden or birch. They are a kind of basket, woven and fitted to the shape of a foot. Bast shoes are an obsolete traditional footwear of the forest areas of Northern Europe, formerly worn by poorer members of the Finnic peoples, Balts,Russians and Belarussians. They were easy to manufacture, but not durable. Bast shoes have been worn since prehistoric times. Wooden foot-shaped blocks (lasts) for shaping them have been found in neolithic excavations, e.g. 4900 years old. Bast shoes were