pointe shoes – Page 2

Are You Ready For Pointe?

January 22, 2015 by 4dancers

Photo courtesy of Mararie on Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0

I’m so pleased to introduce this month’s guest contributor, Selina Shah, MD, a dance and sports medicine physician based in San Francisco, where she is Director of Dance Medicine at the Center for Sports Medicine. A dancer herself, Dr. Shah is the company physician for the San Francisco Ballet School, Liss Fain Dance Company, and Diablo Ballet, among others. Her article discusses the different factors that determine when a student dancer should begin pointe work.

We are grateful to her for sharing her expertise on this topic —pass it on!

– Jan Dunn MS, Editor, Dance Wellness

by Selina Shah, MD, FACP

If you are anything like me, you are captivated by ballet. You love its grace and its gravity-defying, gentle power. You dream of performing as a prima ballerina. In the years of work it will require to get there, perhaps the single most important milestone you will face is when to go en pointe.

Dancing en pointe is an advanced stage of ballet that requires unique skills. The challenge is to place almost all of your weight on the extreme tips of your toes, yet appear as light as a feather. In fact, no matter how long all of your toes are, research has shown that most of your body weight is carried on the tip of your big toe. It may sound very hard, but in truth, it’s even harder!

How Will I Know When I Can Get Pointe Shoes?

Most likely, your teacher will decide when you are ready to go en pointe. Many factors are involved in this decision. One common myth is that there is a mandatory age requirement of 11 or 12. In actuality, having adequate training rather than age is what matters. Usually, this means at least several years of consistent, high-quality training. Often girls are around age 11 or 12 before this happens, but some girls may be ready sooner, some later, and some not at all. Keep in mind the quality of work is more important than quantity.

You need enough flexibility in your foot to rise fully to pointe. One way to test this is to point your foot while sitting down with your legs extended in front of you. Next, place a pencil on top of the ankle and it should be able to lay flat from the tibia to the foot across the ankle joint.

You need physical and technical skills, such as strength, balance, alignment and control. For example, you should be able to hold passé on each leg with arms in high fifth for at least a few seconds. You should also be able to perform a clean pirouette with a smooth landing.

You also need to be able to continuously accept and apply teacher feedback.

Last but not least, you must consistently maintain your discipline and focus to keep your skills sharp and reduce the likelihood of injury.

Barre is where you form the crucial foundational skills on which pointe, and all other ballet movements are built. Listen to your teachers when they give you corrections and apply them until they become second nature. For instance, “working the floor with your feet” in tendus helps build your foot strength, which is essential for pointe. Working diligently on your turnout (and not cheating!) results in proper alignment. Use your core strength (ask your teacher how to do this correctly) to help you with balance and control. Apply these skills in the center and across the floor.

Various Foot Types

261936797_761833106a_z — Photo courtesy of mmarchin on Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0

Knowing your foot type is important when you look for pointe shoes. Most people fall into one of three categories.

The “Giselle” or peasant foot shape is one where the first three toes are of equal length, making this ideal for pointe because the big toe gets assistance from the other two toes in carrying the weight.
The “Morton’s” or “Grecian” foot, in which the second toe is the longest, is more prone to developing callouses, pain, and stiffness in the big toe. Most of the body weight is still carried by the big toe in the Morton’s foot.
A narrow “Egyptian” foot, in which the toes taper in length from the big toe which is the longest, usually requires a cap on the second toe so that it can assist the big toe with weight bearing.

Finding The Right Pointe Shoe

Pointe shoe fitting is complicated because of the variability in shape, size, strength, and flexibility of each dancer’s feet. Most dance stores will have specialized pointe shoe fitters on staff. Your first visit to the store will take some time as you try on a number of shoes until you find the one that feels good and fits properly. As you gain experience in pointe, you will likely change shoes.

With hard work and dedication, one day you may be fortunate enough to hear the words “You are ready for pointe!”

Selina Shah, MD, FACP

Selina Shah, MD, FACP is a board certified sports medicine and internal medicine physician and the Director of Dance Medicine at the Center for Sports Medicine in San Francisco, CA and Walnut Creek, CA. She has lectured nationally and internationally on various dance medicine topics and has published papers in medical journals and books including her original research on dance injuries in contemporary professional dancers. She is the dance company physician for the San Francisco Ballet School, Liss Fain Dance Company and Diablo Ballet. She is a physician for Berkeley Repertory Theater, Mill’s College, St. Mary’s College, and Northgate High School. She takes care of the performers for Cirque du Soleil and various Broadway productions when they come to the San Francisco Bay Area. She has taken care of several Broadway performers (i.e. American Idiot, South Pacific, Lion King, Book of Mormon, MoTown, and Billy Elliot). She is a team physician for USA Synchronized Swimming, USA Weightlifting, USA Figure Skating and travels with the athletes internationally and nationally. She is also a member of the USA Gymnastics Referral Network. As a former professional Bollywood and salsa dancer, Dr. Shah is passionate about caring for dancers. She continues taking ballet classes weekly and also enjoys running, yoga, Pilates, weightlifting, and plyometric exercise.

Dance DIY: All-Natural Antiseptic Spray

June 13, 2014 by 4dancers

Screen shot 2014-06-12 at 4.35.49 PM — Tea Tree

by Emily Kate Long

Summer is my favorite time to dance. The warm weather makes my joints feel looser and my muscles freer. The more humid air gives the floor just the right amount of tack and traction. Pouring sweat halfway through bare feels like my soul is being washed clean. What could be better?

Unfortunately, all that dampness is prime breeding ground for bacteria, and the added friction inside my shoes causes extra blisters to form where I normally don’t get them. It also makes my shoe bag and my locker smell pretty unpleasant!

Maybe you share a barre with a ripe-footed neighbor, or maybe you’re the one with the stinky shoes. Maybe you’ve put on a costume and wondered if its last wearer forgot to put on deodorant. Keeping dance clothing and footwear fresh is important all year long, but especially in summer when the air gets thicker and the sweat runs faster.

My fix for smelly shoes and costumes is an antiseptic spray* I make at home. Here’s my recipe:

Rinse a perfume or hairspray bottle in hot water a few times to get the residue out. Running it through the dishwasher does the job pretty well.
Fill the bottle with one part alcohol and two parts distilled water. You can use rubbing alcohol, Everclear, or vodka (note from the editor: dancers 21 or over for the Everclear and vodka please!).
Add 30 to 50 drops (two to three teaspoons) of lavender essential oil or tea tree oil. Both of these have antiseptic properties and smell awesome.
Close the bottle up tight and shake to combine the ingredients. You’ll probably notice that the solution gets warmer when everything is mixed together.
Spray away!

A few cautions with this stuff:

Always shake the bottle to re-mix before you spray. The oil will separate to the top of the solution.

Essential oils cause some kinds of plastic to deteriorate. I’ve melted more than one of those all-purpose travel size spray bottles by accident. A bottle that already held something like perfume, hairspray, or cleaner will probably hold up fine.

If you plan to use this on fabric, only spray the inside, or test an area to make sure the spray won’t cause any damage.

For feet and shoes, spray after dancing and on the insides of your shoes only. Let the shoes dry out before you put them away. For that matter, let your feet dry out and cool off before you put them away, too!

This spray can also be used safely in pointe shoes. Again, I’ll emphasize letting them dry out for a few minutes before storing. I also use it to sanitize my foot rollers, Yoga mat, and sometimes even my whole locker.

Smelly feet—or just body odor in general—can become a touchy subject in the studio. Having a community bottle of foot spray has become a good way to make light of the subject of stinky shoes. I’ve gotten into the habit of keeping a big bottle of it in my locker that everybody dips into whenever we need it for footwear or dancewear.

With that, I’ll wish all our 4dancers readers a happy, sweaty, fresh-smelling summer.

Here’s to the heat!

*This antiseptic spray is not intended to be used as a treatment for any type of injury or physical problem–it’s just a freshener!

dancer doing arabesque — Emily Kate Long, Photo by Avory Pierce

Assistant Editor Emily Kate Long began her dance education in South Bend, Indiana, with Kimmary Williams and Jacob Rice, and graduated in 2007 from Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School’s Schenley Program. She has spent summers studying at Ballet Chicago, Pittsburgh Youth Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, Miami City Ballet, and Saratoga Summer Dance Intensive/Vail Valley Dance Intensive, where she served as Program Assistant. Ms Long attended Milwaukee Ballet School’s Summer Intensive on scholarship before being invited to join Milwaukee Ballet II in 2007.

Ms Long has been a member of Ballet Quad Cities since 2009. She has danced featured roles in Deanna Carter’s Ash to Glass and Dracula, participated in the company’s 2010 tour to New York City, and most recently performed principal roles in Courtney Lyon’s Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and Cinderella. She is also on the faculty of Ballet Quad Cities School of Dance, where she teaches ballet, pointe, and repertoire classes.

Review: The Pointe Book: Shoes Training, Technique

July 17, 2013 by 4dancers

by Emily Kate Long

The third edition of The Pointe Book, published in 2012 (previous editions were released in 1998 and 2004), covers aspects of pointe shoes and pointe dancing past, present, and future. This edition has been extensively revised and includes one entirely new chapter of sample pointe classes.

Barringer and Schlesinger have compiled a quantity of hard data related to pointe work and pointe shoes. Included are lists of manufacturers of pointe shoes and accessories, shoe size charts, and diagrams of the foot and pointe shoe with accompanying anatomical and functional information. The authors also offer thoughtful discussion on such subjective matters as pointe readiness, training methods, and the relevance of pointe dancing today and in the future. Considerable space is also given to the issue of pointe-related injuries, their causes, and different treatments and therapies.

There is a wealth of valuable insight in these pages. The authors have consulted teachers, professional dancers, and medical professionals with extremely diverse backgrounds, and do a thorough job of presenting the many (sometimes conflicting) viewpoints of their interview subjects. Barringer and Schlesinger do justice to pointe dancing as both art and craft.

The value of The Pointe Book for today’s teachers and students is perhaps best summarized by a passage from the authors’ interview with Kirk Peterson, from the final chapter of the book, “Will Pointe Work Be Relevant in the Twenty-first Century?” Peterson states:

“A healthy respect for ballet’s time-honored traditions, an educated understanding of twentieth-century concerns for artistic relevance, and a respect for the public’s very real love affair with ballet as a theatrical art form, will point a contemporary ballet choreographer in the direction that will guide him or her in a way that embraces ballet’s traditions, yet stretches its potential and still uses pointe work as a valid tool for creativity and artistic expression.”

In The Pointe Book: Shoes Training, Technique, Janice Barringer and Sarah Schlesinger write with evident respect for the traditions and history of classical dance, and carefully provide the most current information on the state of our art and craft. This compendium also raises provocative questions regarding training methods, injury, and general attitudes of teachers, artists, and audience toward pointe dancing. The authors have given a useful resource to teachers, dancers, and parents for the development of the kind of artists Peterson describes above.

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Disclosure: Janice Barringer is a contributing writer at 4dancers.org

Pointe Shoes – The Dancer’s Glass Slippers

April 1, 2013 by 4dancers

by Emily Kate Long

Currently I’m in rehearsals for Cinderella, so the next few installments of Finding Balance will explore a range of topics relevant to that story. For this post, I’ll begin at the bottom with pointe shoes. They are a dancer’s glass slippers, and this is my own personal fairy tale: the search for my most appropriate shoe.

I’ve worn pointe shoes for twelve of my fifteen dancing years. In middle and high school I tried what seemed like almost every shoe out there, then performed surgeries major and minor on the shoes I chose to try to engineer the perfect pair. Darning of toes, slicing of vamps and shanks, re-threading of drawstrings, stitching of sides—so much fuss over footwear! It shouldn’t be that complicated, right?

Towards the end of January I found myself at my first pointe shoe fitting in nearly ten years. After flip-flopping between Freed and Chacott for all that time, I decided to try once again to explore some other options. I had one rule: I wanted to be able to put them on and dance. No fuss, no alterations. After trying on half a dozen or so different styles and brands, I decided to go right back to Chacott Veronese, the very first type of shoe I wore when I started pointe at age 12.

I was nervous! All those things I had been doing to my shoes to “enhance” them had become like security blankets or crutches. I felt like my feet were naked! The reality check was recognizing how much about my pointe work has changed over the past few years and trusting that I no longer need those crutches.

I had sewing help and moral support with the first pair

I spent much of my pre-professional training trying to compensate for what I believed were inadequate ballet feet. I wore “farches” (arch pads, like a padded bra for your feet). I stuck my feet under a dresser for twenty minutes each morning (a terrible idea, in case you were wondering). I wore my shoes really soft so I could push far over them and superficially achieve a more curved foot. Yikes!

Placing undue stress on the distal joints of the foot.

The result was that I never knew where my foot was going to be until it rammed into the floor. Slips and falls over the medial corners of my shoes were daily events. Bunions, bruised toenails, chronic ankle pain… I cringe to think of the gambles I took with the health of my feet, knees, and ankles. I believe that ballet is not inherently harmful to the human body. Distortions (even minor ones) cause injuries, and good equipment and good technique prevent them. I was due for an overhaul!

Re-learning pointe technique in my early twenties was confusing and frustrating at first, but patience and persistence have paid off. The changes have made it possible for my feet to be in control of and in harmony with my shoes instead of at their mercy! I learned how keep my toes vertical and allow the arch and instep to do the bending.

Examples of vertical toes with articulated arch

The ankle is designed to do this job because it is a weight-bearing joint. The metatarsals, phalanges, and the dorsal metatarsal and medial collateral ligaments are not. (Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy, 4^th ed., plates 527-8)

Working on pointe in a more anatomically correct way has also had a positive effect on the overall muscular shape of my legs and the structure of my feet. Where I used to feel it necessary to fake a good arch, I now feel confident that the shape and articulation of my feet complement my overall line.

Which brings us to the heart of the matter: the importance of finding a shoe that a) fits and functions well and b) aesthetically matches one’s foot/body/leg line. Our style is partly dictated by our function, our function is partly dictated by our structure, and our shoes should complement both of those things.

To illustrate, here’s a bit about some of the shoes I’ve tried:

Chacott Veronese: My very first style of shoe. I loved them always and let myself be talked out of them time and time again. It feels good to be home! I can sew them and go, and their minimal shape complements my slight feet. They are made with a bouncy kind of glue instead of paste, and need some extra glue before wear because of the softness of the box relative to the shank.

Freed Classic and Classic Pro: I chose these partly for aesthetic, partly for the Pro’s 3/4 shank. I loved the minimal-ness of Classic and the U shape vamp but the paste consistently gave out after less than thirty minutes of rehearsal! Eating through pair after pair of shoes was not a good use of my time or my company’s money. They were loud because of the amount of extra glue it took to make them worth it, which was awfully distracting. My preferred makers were also not always available. Pro lasted much longer, but felt like too much stuff on my foot.

Ushi Nagar: These were professional hand me downs. I liked that they had the same bounciness as Chacott, and it felt glamorous to wear somebody else’s special order shoes. They were a shoe of convenience, suitable but not ideal.

For me, this Cinderella story is also has a moral: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! I was born with feet that go with my body—not the “ideal” ballet foot by any stretch, but aesthetically adequate and sufficiently functional. Optimizing their work has refined their appearance. I’ve learned to love and appreciate them for what they are and what they do for me. As good workers, they deserve equipment that helps them out and shows them off!

En Pointe! An In-Depth Look At The Pointe Shoe

March 5, 2013 by 4dancers

The National Museum of Dance has an exhibit about pointe shoes that dancers and dance-lovers will want to check out…

We reached out to Assistant Director Sarah Hall Weaver to learn more about it and are excited to share some of the details with you here…

national dance museum — Photo by Daesha Devón Harris

Tell readers a bit about your upcoming exhibition, En Pointe!

En Pointe! is an exhibit that explores the pointe shoe from many different angles – how they are made, how they are designed to suit individual feet, how they came to be what they are today, and how they are integrated into the lives of both amateur and professional dancers. We know that the public is fascinated, and even sometimes daunted by these unique shoes. For a lot of people they are the very symbol of everything they love about dance but for others they can be very intimidating if you have never experienced them on your own feet or had someone give you the opportunity to get closer. The exhibit will suit both audiences – we want young dancers to learn more about their shoes, and we want people that know nothing to learn to love them as much as we do!

pointe shoe exhibit — Photo by Daesha Devón Harris

Where did the idea for this particular exhibition come from?

The idea for this exhibit came from one of our Board of Directors members, Leslie Roy Heck. Leslie is a former soloist of the New York City Ballet and during her time with the company she was privileged to work with George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and Peter Martins. Leslie now owns a dance retail store in our city of Saratoga Springs, NY called Saratoga Dance, Etc. where she and her staff fit shoes for students of all ages. She is also the founder of Bunheads Dance Accessories, a product line that was acquired by Ballet Makers Inc., the worldwide distributor of Capezio footwear and apparel. What can I say?…We couldn’t have asked for a better expert to lead this project!

pointe shoes — Pointe shoes from left to right: Merrill Ashley, Alicia Markova & Moira Shearer, Photo by Daesha Devón Harris

What was the process like of getting the items together for this exhibition?

Every exhibit is its own unique experience, but this one was pretty intense. We worked with six sponsoring pointe shoe companies [Bloch, Capezio, Freed, Gaynor Minden, Grishko, and Suffolk], over ten different dance companies, six individual principal dancers, dozens of national participants in our pointe shoe decorating contest, several fine artists, and a slew of other collaborators. There was a lot of communication and organization back and forth but the overwhelming positive responses we received assured us of how important this project was. If anything, the hardest part was making the decisions of where to draw the line. There is so much to say about these seemingly simple, little, pink objects, we could probably have filled the entire Museum. We just had to keep in mind our mission to explain the essential basics to pointe shoe newcomers, and to present some new ideas to pointe shoe pros.

Would you share some of the highlights of the exhibit?

One of my favorite sections is the interviews from five principal ballerinas from five different American companies. I think it’s really important for pre-professional dancers of all ages and levels to hear from their on-stage heroes. The advice they give can’t be said enough and it is so encouraging for young students to hear that these stars had similar struggles when they were beginning dancers. I also love the section that talks about men dancing en pointe. It’s very forward thinking in terms of strengthening and training, and it is always interesting to see on stage. My favorite thing about the exhibit as a whole though is that the shoes and accessories that are attached to the text boards are there for guests to actually touch. Just being able to feel the texture and strength of the items is a great way for people to become familiar with the strange world of ballet.

Can you share a few of the other exhibitions that you will have coming up this year?

We have a lot coming up for our 2013 season! We will be welcoming an incredible bronze sculpture and pastel exhibit from artist Andrew DeVries, and this year’s Art in the Foyer photography exhibition will be a selection from Jordan Matter’s Dancers Among Us series, which has become a national sensation. Like many other organizations all over the world, we are also joining in on the celebration of the Rite of Spring’s 100^th anniversary with a special exhibit spanning the history of Nijinsky’s original ballet and the dozens of choreographers since that have braved Stravinsky’s brilliant score. And perhaps one of our most highly anticipated projects in the last several years is the complete renovation of the Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame. The new space will honor its forty-eight amazing inductees with more video, more images, and more artifacts than ever [though there will be fifty by August as we will be inducting two HUGE dance icons in coming months]. It’s going be an exciting season, and we can’t wait to share it with you!

En Pointe! is scheduled to run from March 20, 2012 through November 24, 2013 and is sponsored by Bloch, Capezio, Freed, Gaynor Minden, Grishko, and Suffolk.

How Will I Know When I Can Get Pointe Shoes?

Various Foot Types

Finding The Right Pointe Shoe

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Disclosure – Affiliate & Ad Info

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