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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Onstage, the ballerina is an ethereal creature, balancing on the inch-wide platform of her pointe shoe. Backstage, she's a stock clerk, seamstress, blacksmith, and wrecking crew. Maintaining the central illusion of ballet--that women don't walk, they waft--takes a lot of work and a lot of shoes. The average, traditional pointe shoe, a Capezio or a Freed of London, is mostly handmade, still created in the painstaking way it was in Anna Pavlova's day: out of satin, cotton, flour, water, and not much else. One pair of toe shoes costs sixty dollars and lasts about an hour. New York City Ballet spends half a million dollars a year on them.
The shoes are not just expensive; they're high-maintenance. At City Ballet, each dancer wears out about a hundred and thirty pairs a year, so the dancers spend a lot of time sorting through weekly shipments, accepting and rejecting them shoe by shoe. After they've chosen their stock, all the dancers, even the principals, must sew on their own ribbons, which crisscross prettily up the ankle and hold the shoe on the foot. Even before putting the shoes on, they start breaking them in. First, they crack the hard leather shank (which supports the flexed arch of the foot when a dancer is on pointe) to make it pliable. Then they take a farrier's rasp to the leather sole to give it some grip. To soften up the hard box of the toe, they crush it underfoot or slam a door on it--a softened box helps the movement of the foot appear "more articulate." Then they bang the points on a concrete wall for a few minutes, which deadens the racket the shoes make on the stage floor and allows the dancers to flit more quietly, an important trait in the sylphs and ghosts they often portray. The actual noise reduction is small but worth the effort. As one shoemaker said, "It turns it from clappity-clap-clap to thunkity-thunk-thunk."
Finally, the shoes are ready to wear. The lucky dancers--the ones with what shoe fitters call "peasant" or "Giselle" feet (the first three toes all the same length)--can just slip them over their tights and go onstage. But most dancers--who have "Grecian" or "Egyptian" feet--must add either traditional cushioning, such as lamb's wool or paper towelling, or a more recent product: an Ouch Pouch, Second Skin, a gel pad, a toe spacer or two.
Despite such precautions, the foot- and-ankle area is still the ballerina's primary trouble spot, prone, like a pitcher's shoulder or a running back's knees, to a whole syndrome of injuries: ligament tears, tendinitis, stress fractures, and bone spurs. Even minor complaints--a split toenail, a blister, a corn--can disable a pointe dancer, though many perform through the pain. According to Garielle Whittle, who teaches beginning pointe class at the School of American Ballet, it's a lesson that young ballet dancers absorb from the first day. "Of course, you do have to stop if you're in great pain," she says. "And they know that. But they really persevere, even when they're hurting a bit. At eleven or twelve, that's saying a lot."
In the past few years, however, some dancers have started performing in a new shoe, the Gaynor Minden--pink satin on the outside, but with Nike-style high-tech innards designed to protect the feet. The shoes are quiet. They save companies money: a pair costs twenty dollars more than the traditional shoes but lasts five times longer. They have thin inner and outer linings made of shock-absorbent urethane foam, to ease discomfort and cut down on injuries. And they don't have to be broken in: Maria Riccetto, one of six American Ballet Theatre dancers to use them, calls them "sew and go." If you're determined to stand on tiptoe for hours on end, they're sensible shoes....
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