Pointe shoe

A pointe shoe is a type of shoe worn by ballet dancers when performing pointe work. Pointe shoes were conceived in response to the desire for dancers to appear weightless and sylph-like and have evolved to enable dancers to dance en pointe (on the tips of their toes) for extended periods of time. They are normally worn by female dancers, though male dancers may wear them for unorthodox roles such as the ugly stepsisters in Cinderella, or in dance companies that feature men dancing as women, such as Les Ballets Trockadero. They are manufactured in a variety of colors, most commonly in shades of light pink.

History of pointe shoes

Women began to dance ballet in 1681, twenty years after King Louis XIV of France ordered the founding of the Académie Royale de Danse. At that time, the standard women's ballet shoe had heels. Mid-18th century dancer Marie Camargo of the Paris Opéra Ballet was the first to wear a non-heeled shoe, enabling her to perform leaps that would have been difficult, if not impossible, in the more conventional shoes of the age. After the French Revolution, heels were completely eliminated from standard ballet shoes. These flat-bottomed predecessors of the modern pointe shoe were secured to the feet by ribbons and incorporated pleats under the toes to enable dancers to leap, execute turns, and fully extend their feet.

Bark

Bark is the outermost layers of stems and roots of woody plants. Plants with bark include trees, woody vines, and shrubs. Bark refers to all the tissues outside of the vascular cambium and is a nontechnical term. It overlays the wood and consists of the inner bark and the outer bark. The inner bark, which in older stems is living tissue, includes the innermost area of the periderm. The outer bark in older stems includes the dead tissue on the surface of the stems, along with parts of the innermost periderm and all the tissues on the outer side of the periderm. The outer bark on trees which lies external to the last formed periderm is also called the rhytidome.

Products derived from bark include: bark shingle siding and wall coverings,spices and other flavorings, tanbark for tannin, resin, latex, medicines, poisons, various hallucinogenic chemicals and cork. Bark has been used to make cloth, canoes, and ropes and used as a surface for paintings and map making. A number of plants are also grown for their attractive or interesting bark colorations and surface textures or their bark is used as landscape mulch.

Canada Wide Media

Canada Wide Media Limited is an independently owned publishing company in Western Canada, based in Burnaby, British Columbia.

History

Canada Wide Media Limited co-founder and CEO Peter Legge purchased a ten-cent magazine in 1976 and grew it into one of Canada’s most successful print and digital media companies. Canada Wide Media now employs more than 130 media professionals and is the largest independently owned magazine publishing company in Western Canada.

Trivia

Publications

Magazines

Bark, Germany

Bark is a municipality in the district of Segeberg, in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.

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