Get to the Pointe — pointe

We're back in the San Francisco Shoe Room for this one! In our never-ending cruise along the banks of the ballet internet, we take a delightful little detour to visit the artistry of Australian Ballet. Uploaded to YouTube in 2019, Josephine gets to watch "A to Z En Pointe." This delightful and cinematic video takes a ballet spin on the 26 characters of the Latin alphabet. Which letter bit is your favorite?

A short and quick episode for the holiday - be sure to give screens a break and spend time with loved ones! Josephine is enjoying being a mother to our first Pointe Shop Baby, Dio! Is it me, or has the ballet internet somehow become more wholesome? We have our classics of course - the memes and pointe shoe hacks. And now we get some cool fusion stuff too like ballet shapes on a pole and FINALLY stepping into the future by normalizing men en pointe!  It's been a while since Josephine has been traumatized by the ballet internet. And...

We're taking a little detour from the ballet internet to watch, well, just ballet! If we don't give Josephine a palette cleanser from time to time, she won't be able to survive out here in the ballet wilds haha. So we have some famous excerpts from Giselle, Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet! All productions from The Royal Ballet - one of the most stunning and incredible ballet companies in the world. What do you think of this format? Do you like hearing Josephine explain ballet? What ballets should we watch next?

What happens when you take the ballerina out of the studio? Welp. It might as well be the wild lol. In this reaction, Josephine observes the typical dancer in a new space, a foregin environment. A place without marley and barres and mirrors. Anywhere but the dance studio.  Can you spot a dancer in public? Is it obvious? How can you tell?  And if you're a dancer, how does it feel to be away from your second home? 

Ballet is hard. Figure is skating is hard. Why not put the two together?  There was a very small, fuzzy clip, of this going around socials. Luckily, we had a viewer who found this extended and slightly better quality clip and emailed it to us. We do see all your suggestions on socials and emails, so keep sending them along - thank you! What's fascinating is that Darlene Gilbert actually is still alive today! We were able to watch this old time-y, Disney feeling clip to see some behind the scenes of the patent process. Super cool. Even better, was...