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Pointe Shoes .... Time for a change !
You have bought your new pointe shoes only a few weeks ago, love them and would love to wear them forever, they are so comfortable !
They probably are not as clean as when you received them the first time. They have taken your feet morphology and are less and less supportive with weeks.
This is absolutely normal ! Do you know that :
- During a ballet lesson, shoes support a 5 Tons - not far from 5 cars' weight !
- 80 % of Those 5000 kilograms are mainly supported by the end of the shoe, something like 4 square centimeters !
- Those 4 square cm are the only contact area between the dancer and the floor !
- Your beloved shoes "drink" about 2 moisture liters during a ballet lesson !
- You pull a strength of about 100 kilograms each time you do a relevé to go from flat to en pointe !
- The average life duration for a pair of pointe shoes (based on a weekly 1 to 3 hours ballet training) - ie. the time during which pointe shoes can be worn and used with the highest level of safety - is only 3 to 6 months.
- Not enough supportive pointe shoes will bring :
- Burns : The foot will rub more and more to the inside of the shoes, the skin will become burnt.
- Tendinits : ankle and knees muscles will need to work twice more to counter-balance the low arch support
- Muscular distorsions : Shoes can loose their shape - or worst, collapse- while en pointe.
- Micro bones breakage : Those are microscopic parts of bone reduced to calcium powder, mainly due to the direct contact of the toe withe floor, without any protection.
- Incarnated Nail : Probably the most painful, this is when a nail grows to the bottom instead of straight forward, because nails are in direct contact with the floor.
You can "simulate" all this pain (well, do you really need to ??? No, Do not do that !), just try to go en pointe without wearing pointe shoes (off course, hold to a chair / a barre / whatever). All those traumas - althought they can be repaired - may highly impact your overall health and considerably shorten (or definitely end) your Ballet Dancing Life !
Aware of this all, probably those little dirts that have appeared on your shoes (yes, you will never keep them as clean as the first day if you use them) are far from beeing important, aren't they ??
Isn't your safety more important than those small details ? It is, certainly !!
Anyway, here come a few tips to give a few more life to your pointe shoes :
- After your pointe lesson, never put shoes in a plastic bag. Hang them somewhere - away from any heath source - for at least 3 days.
- Put talcum powder in your shoes before you wear them and once they are dry. Remove the excess before wearing them also ! Not only this will make them dry a little more, they will also have a good perfume, like babies ;-)
- Pointe shoes are yours and only yours. Never let an other girl wear or use them. They are your pointe shoes !
- To avoid mould in not used for a long time shoes, you can use moisture absorbing pouch you can find in most electronic appliances. Just put a pouch in each shoe.
- You can divide by 3 the traction strength on your shoes by just adding rubber bands over the "cou de pied" on your shoes.
- Whenever possible, buy 2 pairs of shoes, and use each one lesson out of two .
- Avoid as much as possible wearing pointe shoes outside and, if you really have to, wear a pair of socks over. You also can use those sort of rubber / latex socks used around pools, and wear them over your shoes.
- Do the same in your ballet school when you leave the dance mat, place those socks over your shoes.
- Last, always keep a spare pair of pointe shoes, they can sometimes be very long to get :-)
If your shoes already seem a bit too old, you can try the following tips (this will not avoid buying new ones, just give you a few more time to :
- Put your shoes in the fridge for a few hours.
- Apply a thin layer of colourless wood varnish on the toe of your shoes
- Put a few nail varnish on the most broken parts of the shoes.
And run to your ballet shop to buy a new pair because, sooner or later, those "revived" pointe shoes will definitely give up ! If you are lucky enough, they will give up while going to a releve. If you are not, they will give up during a pirouette, and the result can be really catastrophic!
As you are a very farsighted ballet dancer, you know that your usual shops always have at least one pair of your pointe shoes available in your size, and have saved the sufficient amount of money to buy a new pair without beeing unable to eat for 3 weeks, haven't you ?
In short, here is a small list of the damages to your pointe shoes, that are most of the time meaning that it is ... time for a change !
- Holes : When you can see your toes, toe shoe is just a shoe !
- Soft Sole : When each end of the sole can reach each other, the shoe has become a slipper !
- Cracked Sole : When there are 2 soles instead of only one, there is no more sole !
- Collapsed platform : When the platform is hard as a converse chuck, wear a pair of chucks !
- Odours : When shoes smell like an old cheese, think about the foot in this cheese !
- pain : If you were made to live in water and moisture, you were a fish. So were your pointe shoes !
- Pain : If your soft shoes are more painfull than your pointe shoes are, ... Well, do I need to explain ?
What to do with old pointe shoes once they are too old to do pointe with ?
There are lots of things that can be done with pointe shoes once they're running too old. From conversion to ballet slippers to ornament, your imagination is the only limit.
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Ballet Slippers : To convert pointe shoes to soft shoes, you must remove the "hard" part of the shoes (so called platform), so that you will be able to go to demi pointe easily. Most of the time, you need to cut (beeing very carefull) from the inside the box, then remove the cardboard that is inside the platform.
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Slippers : You can also convert your old pointe shoes to home slippers, that you'll wear to hang around at home. To make them more comfortable, just cut the end of the shoes (heel side) and put a wide elastic band. This will make the shoes become larger and more comfortable to wear, while making you have very unusual home slippers. Time to start a fashion ;-)
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Street Shoes : If you are very good at customizing shoes, you can covert your pointe shoes to street shoes. This is not, actually, that hard and can be done quite easily. Just gather the sole of some old street shoes, and glue it under your pointe shoes (yes, because the most delicate part of pointe shoes, when worn outside, is the sole) instead of the existing sole (most of the time made of paper, leather or any delicate material). Off course, you will first have removed the existing sole (it usually is either knitted, glued or held with stapled). Be very carefull when doing this, as you can easily tear away the surrounding satin.
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Flowerpot : You can convert old pointe shoes to a flowerpot quite easily !! Just use liquid latex (wear a mask when applying and do this at the open air, as liquid latex contains ammonia which can be harmfull) that you will apply with a brush in your shoes. Be sure that there is a a think layer of latex in the shoes and that there are absolutely no part where there is none. Apply 2 to 4 layers of latex in your shoes then. Once this has dried and you have double (tripled) checked that there is latex all in your shoes (in the box mostly), you can fill the shoe with water, ground or whatever will make a flower live and hand this pot with nice flowers inside. Isn't this a very different pot ?
