Pointe work is dancing on the very tips of the toes, supported by reinforced satin shoes — the defining technique of classical ballerinas.
Pointe work is the technique of supporting the body's full weight on the tips of the toes inside specially constructed satin shoes whose toe-box is reinforced with layers of fabric, glue, and paper to form a hard platform. The earliest references to dancing on the tips of the toes appear in the late 18th century, but pointe became the essential technique of the female classical dancer with Marie Taglioni's performance of 'La Sylphide' in Paris in 1832 — a Romantic ballet in which her ethereal weightlessness defined an aesthetic. Pointe shoes have evolved continually, but they remain unforgiving instruments: most professional ballerinas spend years building the foot, ankle, and core strength required, and a typical ballerina goes through 100 to 120 pairs of shoes per season. Marius Petipa, George Balanchine, and Frederick Ashton all developed entire vocabularies that depended on the pointe shoe; remove it, and most of the classical canon collapses.