Regular ballet flats are just, very soft. They're usually canvas, or leather. You can't go up en pointe with them. Pointe shoes are normally a bit harder so that you can get up on your toes.

Dancers at the New York City Ballet go through about 7,000 pairs of pointe shoes each year. That's because traditional pointe shoes break down after only a few wears. All of them come from Freed ...

Making pointe shoes for ballet dancers is a skill held by very few across the UK – and there is only one producer left in London. Freed of London, based in Hackney, has been making pointe shoes ...

Then, the 2010s brought us the flimsy shoes that gave our American Apparel skater skirts an indie sleaze edge. In the 2020s the many ballet flat iterations we’ve seen have toed (ahem) the line between ...

As someone who grew up in Moscow, ballet was entrenched in the cultural fabric of my life. While ballet has its roots in Italy and France, it has become deeply entwined with Russia’s identity ...

A key plot point in the story of “Cinderella” seems incompatible with ballet. “The fairy godmother brings me a bedazzled pair of pointe shoes,” explains Izabella Tokev, who will be one of ...