More to the Pointe

A few more tips for pointe beginners

So, you’ve gone and bought a pair of pointe shoes, have you?

They might be sitting on the table right now, practically waving at you. You want to go and admire them again, don’t you? Aren’t they beautiful? So shiny, so pink, so clean and sparkling with potential. Go on—pick them up again. Purr over them. They are actually yours.

The thing is, and I know I have mentioned this in the first blog about pointe shoes, they’re also shiny, pink instruments of torture and they’ll make your toes hate you. Your toes might even cry pitiful tears of blood.

 And yet, weirdly, you’ll be wanting to put the shoes back on whenever you can.

 This is the enigma of the pointe shoe.

Now that I’ve totally over-dramatised their hypnotic effects, I wanted to share some of the useful things I picked up when I first started pointe. Perhaps they will help reduce the regularity of those ‘pitiful tears of blood’.

What I learned en route to finding my pointe shoe process

You know how sometimes when you go through things, you are reminded of things that might be useful to someone new? Well, I put on my shoes and took some delightful (pasty) photographs to illustrate the things that came to mind.

The things we find to protect our feet

There is one toe—just the one—that I have to apply extra layers of armour to. I discovered, after about three different pairs of pointe shoes, that it didn’t matter the style, there is a bone in that one toe that causes a fairly hefty dose of pain if it’s pressed against a hard surface. So I get corn plasters, cut them in half (budgeting, don’t you know) and stick half just next to the bone, then, using toe tape, I apply a piece of rubber that was the only useful off-cut of these heft rubber toe pads I was suckered into buying. Done.
 

Yes, it’s weird. Why just one toe? Why are the others hardy and that one is a total wuss? Who knows. But it took a lot of trial and error to figure it out, and that was after I’d figured out how to know if the pointe shoes felt right or not.

The bad news is there is no real shortcut. Yes, you might be lucky and find the winning style and brand on your first purchase, but the truth of the matter is you won’t really know which shoe works for you until you start to dance in them. And then you start noticing which parts of your feet hurt more than the rest. Then you’ll need to figure out how best to protect that area.

If you do a general Google search, there will be bountiful pages dedicated to how to protect your toes using things like toe tape, gel pads, rubber pads, lambswool and even paper towels. Some, all or none of these might work for you. I cannot stress enough that you won’t know until your feet become acquainted with the pointe shoe. As Lyn has so wisely said, “Take care not to let the dance retail outlet sell you everything in the shop apart from the cash register.” It’s a business to them, and when we slide in looking nervous and wide-eyed, it’s easy to be taken in by the sales pitch.

After some money was thrown at the situation, I have finally found that these are the things I need in my armoury and nothing else:

I found, after the corn plaster and bit of rubber, that Ouch Pouches worked the best in general for my feet.

I also later discovered convertible tights. These are wonderful as it means you can apply your pointe shoe armoury after warming up in soft shoes, and if you find midway through your pointe work that something is bothering you, you can easily fix the problem without having to take the tights off altogether.

The tips of the shoes

I have been told by friends who have been dancing for years that they, or their poor beleaguered mothers, would darn the pointes of their new shoes, stitch after stitch in a neat spiral, to help give them more traction. Thankfully these days it’s possible to buy the darned ends and then glue them onto the shoe. Alternatively, you can also buy suede tips, like mine:

I found that despite applying glue with gusto, the edges would still start to peel off so I began the fun (not at all) tradition of using the traditional darning thread to stitch the edges of the suede on. Although my fingers often ended up with numerous punctures, I found this experiment to be quite successful—the stitching and suede combined gives excellent traction and my confidence was boosted in knowing that I wouldn’t slide across the floor and that the suede wouldn’t peel off right at a crucial moment.

Elastic on the heels

Occasionally dancers find that, no matter how well the shoe fits otherwise, the heel slips off. Theoretically tightening the lace should help prevent this, but it’s not always successful. In these cases, you can acquire wide, slightly see-through elastic, sewn at the back of the shoe, that will go around your ankle.

As seen on my shoe, it is a special kind of elastic not found in the average haberdashery. The width means extra lift at the heel, and the way it’s constructed means it’s a little less obvious than the usual solid bit of elastic. It is slightly tricky sewing it on—there needs to be enough tension to hold the heel of the shoe in place, but not so tight that you lose circulation. I’d recommend stitching one side in place, pinning the other and then trying on the shoe just to make sure.

Tying the ribbons

A couple of quick tips when it comes time to tie the ribbons:

• Ensure there is a right angle between your lower leg and foot when tying. If the angle is more acute, it might mean the ribbons aren’t tight enough when it comes to moving around.

Incorrect angle.

Correct angle.

• Tie the knot just behind your ankle bone. For one thing, a knot over the ankle bone will irritate you, but if it’s just behind there’s a neat little gap to tuck the knot and the ends of the ribbons.

Neat and tidy ribbons.

Other, more random things I learnt

Shoes and then socks

The boxes of pointe shoes, as I’m sure you know, are hardened with a layer of glue. This stiff box is what gives us the extra support to get up onto the tips of our toes, but it’s also what makes them rather uncomfortable. Unlike leather shoes, they won’t wrap cosily around your feet easily. One piece of advice I was given when I had just bought my first pair was to put them on whilst at home, or when about to go to bed, and then put thick socks over the top. Yes, your feet will sweat, but that’s the purpose of the exercise. Your warm feet will soften the glue and the shoes will re-shape—not a lot, but some—around your feet. This won’t make them fluffy woollen slippers, but it will help a little in making them slightly less uncomfortable.

Surgical spirits

Ah, if people knew just how unattractive some aspects of pointe are they might not sigh whimsically at the dancers on the stage. So we’ve safely established pointe shoes are not kind to your feet. If you are working in them for long periods of time or something is pressing into your skin, like the seams of tights, you might find you get blisters. And on really bad days, those blisters burst. Beautiful, yes?

Toughening up the skin of your feet can help prevent blisters. A way to do this is to spray surgical spirits on your feet regularly. (According to Google, this technique is used by hikers, runners and dancers alike.) It is not perhaps the most attractive prospect, but then neither is that of burst, bloody blisters.

Be a snob about your tights

And crikey did I learn this lesson the hard way. One day I decided tan tights would look much cooler than poxy pink ones, so I grabbed an ordinary (cheap, low thread-count) pair from from my drawer and off I went. A couple of hours and some amount of work later, my feet were hot and swelling up in my pointe shoes and, lo and behold, the rougher tights had caused several blisters along the tops of my toes. There was blood. I confess there was a moment of “So this is what the professionals feel like” (minus the satisfaction of having danced beautifully) but all manner of shoes were fairly painful for several days after that.

Ballet tights have a higher thread-count and thus the fabric is finer and less likely to chafe. There is a good reason for them, it’s not a marketing ploy. And for those who still want to look ‘cool’, you can actually get them in tan also.

If you’re not sure, don’t buy it

Whilst ballet tights might not be a marketing ploy, as I mentioned earlier there are lots of things that people will recommend and there are often new-fangled things that the sales assistant will be well versed in promoting. However, if you’re not really sure what something is for, or how it will truly help, don’t buy it. It might well turn out to be a huge waste of money. It’s always worth chatting to your teacher as well as she may well have another trick up her sleeve that will actually help and save you some cash.

All that said, grab your shiny pink instruments of torture and enjoy learning how to use them. They may hurt, but they are beautiful!