Ever since I saw pictures of a 4-year old en pointe in the "Ballets Russes" documentary, I've been wondering about the First Dogma of ballet training: namely, Thou Shalt Not Dance On Pointe Until Thou Art Ready. This particularly applies to children: if the bones are not yet fully developed, the foot can become deformed.
Now, as the film demonstrates, this dogma wasn't always in place; girls often started pointe work very early. And although this particular woman was still dancing in her late 80s(!), I'm sure many others did suffer injuries and permanent deformities from being forced on pointe too early. So the question is -- what exactly are those deformities? What happens to the foot?
After an extensive search of everything from ballet forums to the scientific literature, all I could find were X-rays of injuries, mainly stress fractures in the bones of the foot and ligament tears. Students of ballet also report toes "crossing over" or not lying flat, and toenails falling off (yuck) due to severe bruising or edema.
All those are just regular sports injuries, though. I'm more interested in the actual consequences on foot development -- from a historical perspective, what would an early ballet dancer's foot look like after 15 years of pointe training? And what about early pointe shoes that were tapered and did not have a platform for the toes (which was Anna Pavlova's invention) -- how did they affect the foot?
I wish I knew.