English National Ballet 2011 Charity Auction

Louboutin ballet heels were on offer at ENB auction

Tutu sad: I’ve missed out on the charity auction of designer Tutus (that was held on June 29 – 30th) that I mentioned in my blog entry for June 18th. I had originally thought I would be able to bid at the sale that was held in London in the Orangery at Kensington Palace. However since I've been at the Duke’s hunting lodge in Scotland for the last few days I had to forgo that opportunity, but I wouldn’t have missed seeing Crag Abbey for the world! For more about the auction here is an article from a British newspaper:

Eat your heart out Victoria Beckham! Presenting the eight-inch pair of Louboutins...

MAIL ONLINE
By Sadie Whitelocks
June 30, 2011

"You can't turn the page of a magazine without seeing the likes of Victoria Beckham or Coleen Rooney teetering around in a pair of sky-high Christian Louboutins. But now the 47-year-old, French shoe designer has taken height to the next level producing a pair of eight-inch, red-soled stilettos.

Based on the ballet shoe, the towering silk and Swarovski-encrusted heels are being auctioned off along with a number of other fashion wares to raise funds for the English National Ballet (ENB).

High feat: Christian Louboutin has designed a pair of eight-inch stilettos for a silent charity auction which closes at 10.30pm tonight to help raise funds for the English National Ballet

These are one of a number of unique lot items which have been specifically created by some of the leading names in fashion. Designers including Erdem, Giles Deacon, Moschino, Roksanda Ilincic and Julien Macdonald have donated ballet-inspired pieces, modeled by professional dancers.

The current sale - which is hoped to raise over £50,000 for the ENB - comes following the Arts Council's decision to cut its grant by around £2 million.

Louboutin said: 'I could not help being inspired by English National Ballet... after all... isn’t the classical dancing ballet slipper the ultimate heel? 'The heel which makes dancers closer than any other women to the sky, closer to heaven!

Test run: A dancer tries on the latest pair of stilettos from Christian Louboutin, which are based on the ballet pointe shoe

Without raising necessary funds the world famous ballet company will be forced to cutback performances and touring.

The Summer Party Silent Auction opened last Thursday (June 29th) and will close at 10.30pm tonight.

Roksanda Ilincic added: 'It was a challenge to develop an individual slant on a piece that’s so famous for looking a certain way but a challenge is always inspiring.

Inspiration: Above, A dancer showcasing one of the lot items designed by Erdem who has used ballet as a theme for his current fashion collections

Centre stage: Above, Giles Deacon's tutu is based on the character of the Black Swan in Swan Lake

'Also, I think every girl has her fantasy ballet tutu in mind so to have the opportunity to create has been magical.'

Founded in 1950 by Dame Alicia Markova and Sir Anton Dolin, the English National Ballet employs 65 dancers and a symphony orchestra. There has traditionally been collaboration between ballet and fashion dating back to Coco Chanel and dance director Sergei Diaghilev in the 1920s”

The one that got away: The tutu that I was particularly interested in bidding on is the one designed by the team from Agent-Provocateur shown below.

A Romantic Tutu by Agent Provocateur

With a romantic length skirt like that a girl can go commando in crotchless tights so with a flip of the skirt a lover can quickly penetrate me while I’m in full costume. I can have a knockoff made I suppose, but I would have loved to have the original. The dark colors are ideal to hide semen stains.

Cinderella as a pointe shoe fetish ballet

Cinderella’s Prince savoring the feel and scent of a sweaty pointe shoe in situ

Cinderella a version lost to history: One of the most popular versions of Cinderella was written by Charles Perrault in 1697. However, a mid 19th century version now lost in the mists of time was apparently the first to include the evolving blocked ballet shoe that was morphing into the modern pointe as an important element in the story.

This version of the fairy tale Cinderella, now lost except for the choreographers notebook in La Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, deviates considerably from Perrault’s story and is set in late 19th century Germany and tells of a young German Nobleman just reaching his majority as hereditary heir of a Principality in what is now southern Germany. He was too far from the twin centers of ballet shoe fetishism; Paris and St. Petersburg, to travel there frequently so he vowed to feed and cultivate his growing toe-shoe fetish by establishing a local ballet school with retired dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet whose roots go back to the Court of Louis the XIV in 1661 and the Mariinsky Ballet founded in the 1740s, as teachers for his students.

The student selection process was rigorous, but he managed to recruit a small group of established ballet students from the daughters of the local aristocracy as well as set up beginners dance classes for girls 5 y/o and older until in a few years of unrelenting training and discipline he had a small but accomplished ballet school in which the oldest girls in their mid to late teens were wearing toe-shoes of the most advanced design. And, he had a cobbler shop set up for the sole purpose of providing satin and leather ballet shoes for the students and dancers of his company.

One day on his solitary morning walk to inspect the students at his ballet school the Prince came upon a single ballet shoe lying in the dust of the road. He picked it up and inspected it closely marveling at the tiny, tight, neat rows of stitching the held the ribbons on the shoe thinking the needlework was that of a nimble orderly mind dedicated to her art. Slipping his nose into the heavily stitched block of the shoe he took a deep breath and was entranced by the bouquet of the woman’s scent. It was a mixture of estrogenic sweat, damp leather, paste and fabric and he fancied the shoe still warm with her body heat that had made the block so soft and pliable that he wondered how a woman could dance on her toes in such soft shoes. He immediately became amorously aroused and determined to find the owner and return her shoe.

He hurried on to the school and had all the students and female staff appear before him one at a time trying to find the shoe’s owner, but to no avail and so he asked the Ballet Master to call the roll to see who was missing. The only absent dancer was one of the young French ballerinas, a beloved teacher at the school and who that morning had rushed home suddenly shortly after arriving. And so it was that the Prince appeared at the door of dancer’s thatched cottage at the end of the village. He asked to see the dancer, but her maid said she was indisposed. He insisted and was admitted by her maid who again said her mistress was unwell and wasn’t receiving visitors and he again insisted that she appear before him. So after some time she appeared before him with ashes on her clothes looking pale and unwell and when he asked after her health she blushed and bowed her head and didn’t reply.

Taking her chin in his hand he gently raised her head and in his most gentle and persuasive voice asked her to sit down and please tell him what was wrong so he could make it right. She immediately smiled and blushing apologized for her appearance and said she had been about to light the fireplace in her room to warm herself when a log fell off the grate and covered her with ashes. She said there was nothing he could do since her time of the month had arrived a day early and she was bleeding. She said she expected to be fine by evening as her cramps normally lasted only a few hours at the beginning of her flow.

He understood immediately and was certain the shoe belonged to her, but it was necessary to test his certainty because he intended to make the owner of the shoe an offer she couldn’t refuse. And so he knelt before her and withdrew the shoe from a pocket of his jacket, unfolded its soft satin back and after asking her to extend her left leg and point her foot he slipped the shoe onto her foot and pulled the back over her heel. It fit perfectly! Not one to waste time, while he was kneeling he asked her to marry him and she immediately agreed since she had been in love with him for months because of his kindness to the students of the school and his skills at hunting and diplomacy which she had learned about from traveling minstrels before she arrived in the village to accept a position as a ballet teacher. She thanked him for returning her shoe as the specially blocked shoes were very expensive and took a lot of time to adapt to fit her feet and she showed him her monogram she had embroidered on the inside of the fabric quarter panel of the shoe just to establish her ownership.

The Nutcracker: Prince Freud wrote the story-lines for a series of other ballets that all had the use of toe-shoes for seduction, defense or as offensive weapons and as objects of veneration on or off the feet of the heroines in his stories. And this was at least ten years ahead of the first use of the pointe shoe as a weapon in a mainstream ballet, The Nutcracker. The Nutcracker, a ballet in two acts, music by Tchaikovsky with choreography by Lev Ivanov was first presented at the Maryinsky in December 1892 and in it the child heroine, Clara, contributes to the defeat of the Mouse King by hitting him in the head with the block of her pointe shoe which saved the life of the Nutcracker Prince and earns her his love and adoration in return.

Prince Freud had three daughters by the French ballerina he married and they were all raised and trained by their mother to use their expertise in musicality, technique and stamina in the art of ballet dancing to cloud the minds of the males pursuing them until they so besotted the men of their choice that they got almost everything they wanted and lived happily ever after. By then the process of vulcanizing rubber had been perfected and cervical caps had become effective and the favorite means of contraception in Europe. If carefully fitted and used consistently the cervical cap was extremely effective in preventing pregnancy so the Princesses could plan their families. The daughters married into the nobility of the surrounding countries and in that manner the fetish of the pointe shoe was spread and nurtured throughout the ruling class of Europe.

Male children were tutored in the ballet shoe fetish as part of their earliest education so almost all would seek out Ballerinas as mistresses, consorts and wives in order to support their pointe shoe fetish which in many cases rose to the level of addiction. Even young European nobles sent to be educated in the monastic universities of Oxford and Cambridge in England which were then infamous as hotbeds of repressed sexuality and homosexual Dons could not be swayed from their quest for ballet girls and insisted on the girls wearing their ballet shoes during sex. However, the pattern was broken during the First World War (1914-1918) as nearly an entire generation of the male European elite was slaughtered on the battlefields of Europe and the pointe shoe fetish as a driving force in the lives of the male nobility almost died out.

Cinderella: And then, at the end of the Second World War (1939-1945) a Russian composer and his choreographer produced their version of the story of Cinderella as a ballet in which the pointe shoe became an object of veneration. Cinderella is a ballet in three acts with music by Sergei Prokofiev and choreography by Rotislav Zakharov and was first performed by the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow in November 1945. This ballet was the first in the 20th century to use the pointe shoe as a public object of veneration by substituting it for the glass slipper in the fairy tale and by doing so they rekindled the flames of the pointe shoe fetish and worship in Europe.

Reawakened by the ballet the pointe shoe fetish grew in the mainstream of social life under the noses of one of the most repressive and brutal regimes seen in modern times. Ever since Cinderella was first performed the adoration and seduction of the pointe shoe has simmered and bubbled beneath the surface. Slim girls lovely in satin shoes that make their long gorgeous legs look even more beautiful when balanced on their toes. Over the years Cinderella has contributed to the mystique of all the women who have ever danced in pointe shoes. Of necessity in 1945 the fetish was cloaked in the gauzy mists of feminine beauty, skill and artistic temperament, but the rush to smell and own a dancer’s sweaty pointes was on in earnest in Europe once again.

Women pointe shoe fetishists

Capezio Glissé with platform edges darned

Pointe shoe fetish: In my entry for March 14, 2009 I discussed the obsession with pointe shoes from the male perspective. Not all pointe men of course, but the ones I’ve known who were willing to talk about the origins of their fixation as best they understood it. While they all said that they appreciate the beauty of the female body performing ballet and the skill and grace a woman needs to dance confidently on her toes almost to a man they admit there is a strong sexual component to a males interest in pointe shoes. And, since I am who I am I dealt primarily with the sexual and BDSM aspects of pointes for men while women did the work of actually wearing the shoes and sustaining the discomfort, if any. I intentionally left out the portion of the male pointe fetish community made up of men who want to wear pointes themselves because I think an untrained man in pointes can be a serious hazard to his own health. Not that men can’t confidently wear pointe shoes and dance en pointe, the members of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo do and make a good living at it, but they train for the strength and exertion required.

However, some of the men I know who want to wear pointes themselves seem unwilling to put in the time and effort needed to strengthen their bodies to prevent serious injury while wearing pointes for anything other than posing in and a few even deny the need for any pointe training. Perhaps that is all their testosterone talking. Sigh! For these guys unless they start ballet training at a good dance school ballet boots would be a good and much safer first step in starting to self-train for wearing pointe shoes..

Women and pointe shoes: In this entry I will cover the pointe shoe fetish in women. A substantial percentage of girls are sent to ballet classes by their mothers to learn grace and develop strong lean bodies and for a very few with sufficient talent and desire perhaps to move on to the professional level in ballet. Some start as early as 4 y/o going to dance movement classes to develop young bodies and sort out the ones with natural talent so the teachers can concentrate on fast tracking the high achievers. By the age of 10 some few are approaching the age when their bones will be hard and strong enough to support their weight so that under a sports medicine doctor’s care they are allowed to begin training in pointe shoes. It’s impossible to exaggerate the thrill a girl feels being allowed to be fitted for her first pair of pointe shoes. No girl taking ballet has ever not wanted to wear pointe shoes and thought herself beautiful as a princess in the four Ts: Tiara, Tutu, Tights and Toe-shoes. It is a coming-of-age moment, a rite of passage she has waited for, for more than half her young life and even for the most blasé girl it is immensely thrilling! It is also the start of the most intense ballet training of her life and the point at which the poorly prepared or poorly motivated fall by the wayside, because pointe training is not for sissies. Some girls with the raw talent don’t have the motivation, the desperate personal need to dance beautifully on their toes that is so necessary to get a young dancer through the hours, days and weeks when her feet are so sore she wonders if she can go on. A few of us manage to channel the pain and some of those are able make the pain an important and eagerly anticipated part of our lives en pointe.

While pointe shoes are traditionally a very sophisticated woman’s specialty performance shoe and therefore worn almost exclusively by women very few women are fixated by their pointes except with regard to getting the best fitting, most supportive and most comfortable shoes for the roles they are performing. Other than professional dancers after their teens when they move into the workforce most women stop pointe training except on a periodic basis as a way to keep in shape and even dancers as their careers progress or stall eventually want to stop wearing pointes because of their discomfort, high maintenance and expense, because for most non-union work the dancer has to provide her own shoes.

Women pointe fetishists: There are however a few women who are not only very accomplished at pointework but enjoy the feel of wearing pointe shoes and they often gravitate to work where they can wear pointes as much as possible and occasionally as much as they would like w/o being considered kinky or weird. Even so, wearing traditionally made pointes of leather, paper, cloth and paste is expensive because they are made to cushion the dancer’s weight by softening so basically they self-destruct after only a few hours wear. That is why polymers and other nontraditional materials are finding their way into high-tech pointe designs like Gaynor Minden with it’s pre-arched polymer shanks and toe-boxes as well as internally and externally padded blocks for noise reduction and comfort while extending the life of a pair of shoes by two or three times that of shoes made of traditional materials. The two female pointe shoe fanatics I know both wear Gaynors as do a lot of the cabaret burlesque-ballet acts like Dita Von Teese because of their comfort, almost no break-in required and long life.

Pointe shoes as recreational footwear: What I love about wearing pointe shoes is their snug fit, my toes taped and packed into the toe-boxes with the elastics and ribbons binding my feet into the shoes. I love the feel of my 100 lbs pressing my toes into the thick pads and my toes eventually going numb so that if I’m into pain then I need to roll off pointe and walk around flat to get the circulation going in my toes again. Of course there are some of the same attractions for a woman pointe fetishist as there are for men because women want to be admired and appreciated by men and most of all to attract them. Things like the sexy shape of the fully arched foot sheathed in satin and leather. The bondage look of the snugly and expertly tied ribbons pulling the waist seam and quarter panel into the arch of the foot with the knots and ends hidden so that the ribbons appear to be seamless. The pointed foot extends the line of the leg and presents the woman’s insteps, arches, ankles and calves beautifully And the effect on the wearer’s pelvic muscles when she is balanced on her platforms is what so many girls love about pointes; causing the buns and pelvic muscles to clench and the bust to be thrust out enhancing the presentation of the woman’s figure considerably giving even small busted women a more feminine figure. And lastly there is the clenching of the muscles in the woman’s pelvic floor and vaginal barrel when she is en pointe so that when she is penetrated while on her toes and from behind she is as tight and deep as it is possible for her to be giving her partner the best experience she is capable of. Pointes as recreational footwear are a marvelous accessory to a dancer’s wardrobe that not only enhances her looks but her performance as well during an intimate encounter.

My pointes: In my case I wear special makeup Freed classics for performing, Capezio Glissés as bed-shoes and I wear Gaynor Mindens with a deeper vamp to take additional internal toe-box padding while having sex on my toes and for business meetings. It’s not that I mind the pain, but I’ll admit that when I’m enjoying the pain of being repeatedly dropped on my toes - when a stallion thrusts into me from the rear lifting me off my platforms only to be dropped back on my toes when he withdraws – then I can’t concentrate properly on what he is doing to my sweet-spot and miss some of the ecstasy in the run-up to orgasm a skilled lover always provides. In addition if I’m wearing pointes to a business meeting if I’m too much into and aroused by the pain then I can’t concentrate on some competitor trying to mind-fuck me into a bad business deal. So, yeah, men are such magnificent sex machines that I cheat a bit to get the most from the man I’m with. I can always change my shoes to have more pain when there is no man to fuck and I’m soloing.