“Maina Gielgud danced in her first pair of pointe shoes at the age of six. That is at least five years before the bones are fully formed but, remarkably, the glued and stiffened shoes did no harm to Gielgud’s slender feet. Half a century later she was still teaching ballet class in pointe shoes. She reluctantly discarded them three or four years ago. It was, she says, “a huge, major decision.”