We found this YouTube video by The New York City Ballet on the importance of the right Pointe Shoes for ballet and thought this was simply stunning.
As the parent of a 3 or 4-year-old just starting out in Pre-Ballet class, you may wonder if your daughter will even like ballet. How will she do in class? Will she be able to concentrate long enough through the class to learn? What skills and abilities will she develop? So you take her, and you see her grow, change, and blossom into more of who she is over time. All the while, you know you are shaping her, molding her. As her parent, you want to expose her to positive people, important ideas, and valuable experiences. You want her teachers and instructors to be gentle, encouraging, and mentoring. You know a great deal of her acceptance of ballet will have to do with how she feels in class and if she knows her ballet instructor likes her. She will like Ballet if she feels accepted, encouraged, and loved.
So you keep bringing her to class. You watch as her eyes sparkle when she hears the music. Her little body moves, attempting to copy what her instructor is doing in the mirror. She is with other dancers, and yet, all you ever see is her. You have hopes and dreams for her because she is too small to have them for herself right now. You want her to have as much as you can give her. You know that being in a ballet class is good for her physically and emotionally. It’s good for her to be with other little girls and to have an activity she likes. You know that she can grow with ballet.
This video on the importance of the right pointe shoes opens up the possibilities of where she might go. The dedication that she could one day have for ballet and the precision that she may have for her Ballet shoes. If you can paint the picture for yourself, you can paint it for her. You can be the light that illuminates her footpath. The one who had a dream for her, and now she has taken it by the hand and made it her own.
If you are telling yourself that your daughter may never be a principal ballet dancer with the New York City Ballet. We would tell you that you probably are right. But consider this: where will life take her – if you believed that she could?