Evil Katey/Good Katey

rebekahloves:

incogninja:

carapace-cowl:

aurelie-dupont:

Breaking in pointe shoes

I know I’ve reblogged this before, but as a non-dancer I’m entirely fascinated by this.

Also a fascinated non-dancer, and I can’t help but wonder why they come with all the shit that gets torn out and burned off?

as an ex-dancer who got yanked out of the game before i could participate in pointe, i love this.

Found my last pair of shoes last weekend. Got all nostalgic. This isn’t helping.

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firstladysexyfineass:

pink-slip:

N.Y.C., Harlem Neighbourhood ballet class, 1968 Photo by Eve Arnold as part of the Black is Beautiful series

That baby in the back is my air right now

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rebekahloves:

tionam:

*chile…

my friend tried to tell me that ballet wasn’t that good of a workout.

misty copeland, if you dont know. badass ballerina ‘bout town.

theballetblog:

Pointe Shoes

Although dancing en pointe has come to epitomise the art of the ballerina, the technique was not developed until the beginning of the 19th century. No one knows when women first danced on the tips of their toes, but it is believed to have begun in the early 1800s.

When the French Revolution brought an end to court ballet, it also caused the heavy unwieldy costumes that had been used at court to lose favour. Dancers began to wear lighter costumes and to appear in ‘Maillots’, tights named after a costumier at the Paris Opéra. Flat ballet slippers tied with ribbons became standard footwear. These new soft shoes without a heel allowed the dancers to jump and turn with greater ease and encouraged them to present a more fully extended pointed foot.

Dancers soon discovered that by rising higher and higher on half pointe, they were able to balance on the ends of their fully stretched toes. Geneviève Gosselin, who died at the peak of her career in 1818, is thought to have danced en pointe in a production of Charles-Louis Didelot’s Flore et Zéphire in 1815 and prints dated 1821 show Fanny Bias in the role of Flore also appearing to be en pointe. However, the earliest attempts to dance en pointe probably involved little more than briefly posing on the tips of the toes to give the illusion of weightlessness.

It was Marie Taglioni’s performances in La Sylphide in 1832 that not only ushered in the age of the Romantic ballet, but also the use of pointe work as an essential choreographic element. Using pointe work to bring a new poetic quality to ballet, she became famous for her gracefulness, her lightness and her ability to seemingly float above the floor.

The shoes worn by Taglioni were not like today’s pointe shoe. There was no stiffened box to support her toes. Instead she darned her shoes along the sides and around the toe to keep the slipper in shape and to give her extra support.

As technique expanded, particularly in the school of the Italian Carlo Blasis, ballerinas began to perform much more demanding virtuoso steps. For example, Pierina Legnani introduced 32 turning fouettés into Marius Petipa’s Cinderella in 1893. To enable the ballerina to do such difficult feats, the pointe shoe had to be considerably strengthened. Dancing en pointe became a means of expressing fire and strength as well as fantasy.

Today’s pointe shoe

Today’s pointe shoe is made of shiny satin and is still shaped liked a tightly fitting slipper. The area covering the toes is made of layers of fabric glued together in the shape of a ‘box’. It is this hardened glue that makes the shoe stiff. It supports the toes and gives them a small platform on which to perch. These blocks come in varying degrees of hardness, widths and vamp lengths. The sole of the shoe is hard leather which prevents it from bending too freely, and also helps to support the feet as they rise on and off the top of the pointe. To keep the shoe on securely, the dancers sew satin ribbons to the sides and tie them tightly around the ankles.

When dancing, a dancer’s body heat tends to soften the glue that forms the box of the shoe and eventually the shoe will fail to support the dancer’s foot. This is the reason why some dancers use more than one pair of shoes in the course of a performance.

The Australian Ballet issues each female dancer with pointe shoes: corps de ballet and coryphée members receive two pairs per week, soloists and senior artists receive three pairs, and principal ballerinas receive six pairs. All of these shoes are hand-made to each dancer’s individual specifications. Over 5000 pairs of pointe shoes are used at a cost of more than $250,000 per year – a huge expense for the company but a necessary one, for without them today’s classical dancer would not be able to dazzle the audience with displays of exciting turns, intricate footwork and spectacular balances. source

The one surviving pair I have are still dyed black from dancing to Swan Lake :D

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ravensrandoms:

silentlittlek:

leotardsandbunheads:

tsarina-ballerina:

summahope:

move-your-soul:

danceprincesssss:

nickfav:

thenextfamous:

crying

Omfg ^^^^ what he said.

this is what the guys in my level would do any time we had a break between classes.

WAT.THIS IS PERFECTION. 

JEFFREY CIRIO WHY ARE YOU THE HOTTEST THING IN BALLET

…GET OUT OF HERE YOU’RE RUINING MY LIFE

I THINK ILL GO DIE NOW. all of this. its all just so perfect.

Breathtaking…

I dare anyone to tell me dancers aren’t monster athletes. Go on, try it.

Ballet = the most badass.

(Source: itseightyeightdegrees)

theballetblog:

Raven Wilkinson: The first African American to be a member of a major ballet company in the United States

When Raven Wilkinson was about five years old, her mother took her to the City Center Theater to see the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. The ballet was Coppelia and when the curtain opened, Raven was enraptured by what she saw on the stage. From New York City, her mother was influential pursuing ballet training for her. Wilkinson began studying with a well-known Russian dancer when she was nine. After being inspired by seeing Janet Collins on stage in the early 1950s, she left school in her teens to pursue ballet full time.

When the director of Ballet de Russe purchased Monte Carlo, her ballet school the students were invited to try out for his company. Sergie Denham, director of the school and company, was impressed with Raven’s progress. He offered her a strange proposal: Denham wanted her to be part of the company without a contract. He told her that there was another girl in Chicago he wanted to see before giving her a contract. Raven felt they wanted to see how she would be accepted in the south. Raven made it clear that she would not advertise that she was black, but she would not deny it either. When they got to Chicago without any problems, it turned out that there was no other girl.

In 1954 they gave Raven a full contract, making her the first African American to be a member of a major ballet company. In the second season she was promoted to soloist, and stayed with the company for six years. On a tour of one-night stands she roomed with Eleanor D’Antuono. For two years there was no problem until a black elevator girl recognized her as African American and reported her to the management in Atlanta, Georgia. Even though she had roomed at the same hotel in the past, the clerk wouldn’t let her stay. They called a cab to take her to a black hotel. Eleanor was going to go with her, but because of segregation Eleanor wasn’t allowed to stay in a black hotel.

In Montgomery, Alabama the KKK heard there was a person of color performing in the theater. During rehearsal they marched down the aisle in their white robes and on to the stage. They asked each group of girls if they knew which one was a n*****s; no one would answer, even in her group. That night Raven danced in the performance. When the season was over they didn’t fire her but suggested that she had gone as far as she could in the company. Raven was tired after six years of one-night stands, and she took this as a sign that it was time to leave. Getting another job as a dancer was very difficult, so Raven, who had always been a devout Catholic, joined a convent. After eight months her love for ballet and theater made her realize that the stage was where she wanted to be. Raven found that no other major ballet company would hire her, even though she was willing to go back into the corps de ballet. In 1967 she went to Holland and became a soloist with the Dutch National Ballet.
Source

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blaquerose:

pradamafia:

mind-of-a-dancer:

werkk, perfect turnout and spotting

flawless technique

I MISS THIS SO MUCH!

Jesus Christ look at her spot.

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pickupyourlaces:

aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh adorable

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fuckyeahhistorycrushes:

Kind of concerned that he is to late in history, but pictures of the young Rudolf Nureyev always get to me (after the sixties his face went kind of, well, weird). Watching him dance in the 1966 production of Romeo and Juliet enraptures me. That bone structure and the way he moved, just wow. No words can do that justice. Add to that the romanticism of the fact that he was born on a moving train, defected from the USSR in 1961, and his very-apparent-but-always-closeted-gayness, and he is a definite historical crush for me. (I don’t know what it is with lesbians crushing on dead gay men, but there you go.)