When Irene Wilson retires from the dance retail industry this month, she will leave behind a significant legacy for her successor, her daughter Christine Wilson. In the 1990s, Irene became the first woman to successfully market Russian-made pointe shoes in the U.S., distributing and holding the U.S. trademark for Grishko for nearly 30 years. Then, in 2020, she co-founded Virtisse, a brand-new pointe shoe manufacturer.
Headquartered in King of Prussia, PA, the young company has already survived a significant setback: A building fire in February 2025 destroyed all of the company’s belongings, including 25,000 pairs of pointe shoes. Today, Virtisse’s new headquarters are located just 10 minutes from its original site, within a large corporate park, providing better logistics and expansion opportunities.
“I love this business, but we all have a limited time on this planet, and I think I want to travel and see the world,” Irene says. “I know that I’m leaving Virtisse in extremely capable hands.”
Before All of the Pointe Shoes
As a child, Irene arrived in Pennsylvania with her family as Ukrainian refugees. She spoke Russian at home with her grandmothers and took ballet lessons from a former member of the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo. As a teen, she danced as much as she could, worked in clothing shops, and even sold Kirby vacuum cleaners door to door. “I’ve always been open to talking to people about things I believe in,” she says. “If one believes in the product, it’s easy to sell it.”
Irene went on to earn a dual bachelor’s degree, in communications and Russian, from Penn State University. “I didn’t know where that was going to take me, but I wanted to utilize the strengths I had,” she says. “I was good at sales and I spoke fluent Russian. I also knew the world of ballet and loved that ballet was a part of me.”
Down the line, Irene found love, married, had two children and helped her husband run his bicycle shop. But when she became a widow, she says, “I was left with two small children. All I could think was: How am I going to raise them?”
Christine was 12 and her brother was 10 when their father died of cancer. “My mom immediately went into survival mode,” she says. “She was faced with a choice: to go out and find work or to create something of her own.”
Bringing Grishko to the U.S.
Right around this time, the USSR was collapsing. Irene saw it as an opportunity. Remembering how enamored American audiences were with Soviet dancers who had defected decades earlier, she thought dancers might share the same enthusiasm for Russian pointe shoes.
After meeting with a New York City trade group that connected her with Nikolay Grishko, founder and president of the eponymous pointe shoe brand, Irene became the manufacturer’s sole U.S. distributor and held the Grishko trademark in the U.S. for nearly 30 years.
Barry N. Kaufax, co-owner of Barry’s Dance Theatre Shop in Scottsdale, AZ, started his business relationship with Irene in 1989. After the Loma Prieta earthquake that year, he saw an article about a store that had one of Wilson’s imported pointe shoes in its window. “The fact that the shoe was still on pointe after the 6.9 earthquake showed how well balanced the pointe shoes were made,” he says. “I immediately contacted Irene, and a retailer-importer relationship was formed.”
Kaufax shares how impressed he is by Irene’s ability to balance family life with the inevitable ups and downs of the dance industry. “Personally staying in touch with retailers has been her key to success,” he says. “She doesn’t leave it to any reps to oversell products or oversaturate an area.”
After a trademark dispute, Grishko now markets its shoes under the name Nikolay in the U.S., a change that led Irene to launch her own pointe shoe brand in collaboration with her daughter, Christine. “I’m pleased with the decisions we made, and I couldn’t be more delighted that we launched Virtisse,” Irene says. “I was very proud of Grishko and the shoes, but I feel our Virtisse shoes are even better.”
A Brand Is Born
Virtisse launched in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and amid Christine Wilson’s breast cancer diagnosis, which she battled while raising two teenagers on her own. “Navigating treatment while launching a business wasn’t something I ever could have planned for, but it reinforced my ideals,” says Christine, who previously worked with a tech startup and a private-equity firm in Colorado. “You show up. You keep moving forward. You do the work that’s in front of you.”
The third member of the Virtisse leadership team is Khabira Temesheva Isenzhulova, who is chief of engineering and technology. She holds a doctorate in engineering (her thesis was on pointe shoe technology), and her experience includes creating and supervising pointe shoe production for major manufacturers, including Grishko.
Virtisse’s mission is to create durable yet beautiful, science-backed, and anatomically correct pointe shoes. It currently offers 12 styles, as well as ballet slippers for men, women, and children; toe pads, ribbons, and elastics; and two rehearsal-tutu styles.
“We care deeply about quality, innovation, and earning the trust that dancers and retailers place in us,” Christine says. “At the end of the day, our success has always been built on the relationships we’ve created throughout the dance community, and that’s something I will never take for granted.”
Looking to the Future
Even though Christine’s role is now expanding, she sees leadership as something one has to earn continuously. “My mom built something extraordinary, and my role isn’t to come in and make changes for the sake of making changes,” she says. “It’s to understand what makes the business successful, stay calm when challenges arise, give clear direction, and position the company for long-term growth. I take the responsibility very seriously.”
Virtisse’s main focus is and will continue to be “creating, developing, and bringing to market the finest, most technologically sound pointe shoes,” Christine says. “We believe in controlling our brand, our products, and our relationship with our customers. Our retail partners are experts in their own right, and they provide invaluable feedback, fresh ideas, and real-world market perspective. I keep them in mind with every business decision I make because of course I want Virtisse to grow, but it has to grow responsibly.”
Irene believes her daughter will continue to take Virtisse to new heights, especially because of her background in finance. “Christine is very detailed and is far better organized than I am,” she says. “She establishes good relationships with people, is very up-front and honest, and has a lot of integrity.”
Christine has many goals for the future of Virtisse, with one major one being to attend Danzainfiera, the premiere dancewear trade show in Europe. “To me, that represents something much bigger than exhibiting at a trade show,” she says. “It means Virtisse has grown thoughtfully, responsibly, and is capable of meeting worldwide demands without ever compromising the quality that defines who we are.”
Ultimately, she wants to leave Virtisse healthier, more innovative, and better positioned globally than when it was entrusted to her. “[My mom] walked into an industry she knew very little about, created a legacy that has lasted for decades, and she did it without a blueprint,” Christine says. “Her entrepreneurial instincts created the opportunity, and my background helps us think about how to build on that foundation for the long term.”
Hannah Maria Hayes has an MA in dance education from New York University and has been writing for Dance Media publications since 2008.