Stretch your legs! Point your feet! Lift your arms! Use your core! Lift your leg higher! And on top of that, don’t forget to smile!

When you look at a dancer, they appear absolutely carefree and elegant. As if they’re floating in thin air! A dancer’s sole job is to make their movements appear absolutely effortless, giving others the illusion of dance being a world filled with tutus, pointe shoes, fairies, mermaids, princesses and happiness. What you don’t see is the hours of hard work, dedication, pain and perseverance that goes into the finished product. While dancing on pointe looks beautiful, it requires a lot of work and training. I’ve created a short two minute video of the behind the scenes of a dance class at my local dance school SeymourDance.

Since the early 1800s dancers have been dancing on the tips of their toes in an effort to give the illusion of floating and elongating the leg line, which, in my case isn’t a bad thing considering my height. The first pair of pointe shoes were nothing more than soft ballet slippers with a heavily darned tip. This only allowed the dancer to leap onto the tips of her toes for a millisecond before having to come down. However, that small second of dancing on your toes started a whole new evolution of dance. Nowadays, there are hundreds of models of pointe shoes to ensure each dancer has their perfect fit. Although the pointe technology is much more advanced, most dancers will tell you that pointe work isn’t a walk in the park. On the contrary, pointe shoes are more of a foot torture device than anything else.

For this project, each of us had to create a short video no more than two minutes around a live event. The live event was our choice and could be anything from a sports game, a festival or get together or even just an event you made up at home! I happened to have dance class that evening so wouldn’t have to to create or go to any other event within the given time frame, so I decided to film my pointe class!

During the process of revision, I can tell you for a fact that I revised and re-uploaded my video at least 5 times. Each time fixing a small mistake here or there such as the audio, interview or clips. Below is my finished product which will hopefully give you an idea of the work that goes into dancing on your toes. After watching the video, I hope you can agree with me that pointe work is not just a walk in the park!😂