Tulsa Ballet’s Pointe Shoe Fund is a special opportunity for you to partner with our dancers. Your gift will hold our ballerinas up through pirouettes, jetes, and adagios this season! 

Fund facts about pointe shoes:

 · A perfect pair of pointe shoes is handmade, carefully crafted to the specific needs of each dancer. No two pairs are alike! 

· Pointe shoes are extremely loud before they are softened and molded to a foot. 

· A young dancer often acquires her first pair of pointe shoes around age 11 when her bones, muscles, and technique have developed enough to support her and prevent injuries. 

· Ballerinas commonly have several pairs of pointe shoes at once – a pair for turning, a pair for jumping, a few stronger pairs for slow adagios, and a backup.  

· Even though each pointe shoe is custom made, the shoes are further personalized by the ballerina by bending, smashing, cutting, sewing, taping, knocking, or gluing. 

· The process of breaking in a shoe and sewing on the ribbons and elastic can take 30-45 minutes. 

· Despite all of the time that goes into each shoe, it may only last for a few hours of a performance or perhaps through a week of rehearsals.  

· Every time a dancer jumps on pointe, three times her body weight is carried on her big toe. 

· Each ballerina can use as many as 40 unique pairs of pointe shoes each season!  

· At approximately $100 a pair, a significant amount of money is required simply to keep the ballerinas dancing.   

Your donation of any amount will keep our dancers on their toes all season! Gifts of $200 or more will recieve autographed pointe shoe from the season!