Ballet shoe Ballet shoe A ballet shoe, or ballet slipper, is a lightweight shoe designed specifically for ballet dancing. It may be made from soft leather, canvas, or satin, and has flexible, thin soles. Traditionally, women wear pink shoes and men wear white or black shoes. Tan colored slippers—which are unobtrusive and thus give the appearance of dancing barefoot—are worn in modern ballets and sometimes modern dancing by both men and women. All dancers typically wear ballet slippers at the beginning of a ballet class, whereas female dancers may change into pointe shoes for centre work and performance. Ballet shoes must fit
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