Taglioni on Rose BushConclusion

The representations of the dancer, on stage, in prints and in text, all conspired to create an ideal and erotic feminine spectacle. The pointe shoe was instrumental in this construction of the dancer. Ironically,Xray of Foot en Pointe great pains and efforts were taken to maintain the illusion of the effortlessness in pointe work. Despite thephysicality of this style of dance, the value of pointe work only extended as far as its ability to appear natural. The natural grace of a dancer’s techniques allowed her to achieve the incorporeality that was central to the fetishization of the female body.Concerns and guilt about the degradation of the body through this eroticization could be sidestepped by the locating the dancer in another world, placing the ballerina at safe distance from her middle-class counterpart and freeing her and her body from the social convention of the prosaic world. The pointe shoe was the site where the danseuse both embraced and denied her physicality: it was through her physical mastery of pointe work that the dancer affected her apotheosis in the eyes of the middle-class viewer. In this form, the ballerina was render safe for middle-class male consumption, allowing her to embody both ideal ephemeral femininity and erotic, womanly spectacle.