Balletonomics

It’s time to put the foot down on pointe shoes.

Modern manufacturing technology allows the mass production of throwaway monthly contact lenses with a retail price of $20 per pair.  Millions of people insert these things in their eyes and rely on them for sight without incurring bruises, callouses, or blisters.

Modern manufacturing technology allows the mass production of the most complex printed circuit boards imaginable for under $10 each. 

Modern manufacturing technology allows the mass production of the most reliable, beautiful, fully loaded, sexy, environmentally friendly, smell good Mercedes Benz for $40,000.

So why, pound for pound, do pointe shoes (@$60-80 pr) cost so much more than a Mercedes Benz? 

 “Think of the production of pointe shoes as complex as making heart valves,”  sneer the manufacturers while twirling their mustaches.  News flash:  heart valves are mass produced faster and more cheaply.

The pointe shoe companies - all of them - have conspired to hold the ballet profession hostage to the notion that 21st century manufacturing technology cannot mass produce a pointe shoe that will function as well and be as aesthetically pleasing as a handmade shoe.  They do not have the resources to spend on R&D or on new innovative processes for mass manufacturing shoes.  To stay in business, they must promote the old way as the only way.

Let's give credit to the Gaynor Mindon folks for using modern materials, but the production is still by hand, and the resulting shape of the foot while wearing their shoe is not always pleasing.

Dancers seemingly have been given unlimited leeway by artistic directors to abandon the traditionally tapered shoe in favor of a more costly, fully custom-made, more comfortable, pirouette-inducing, brick-like platform.  Sadly, no longer does the function of the pointe shoe include extending the visual line of the leg.  Today, it’s all about comfort and pirouettes.

Here’s one path to the solution:

Each ballet company in this country should recruit a manufacturing scientist for its board of directors.  All of these scientists should form a consortium for the purpose of finding a way to manufacture  - perhaps even build in-house - a pointe shoe with Mercedes Benz sleek and sex appeal and contact lense quality fit at circuit board prices. 

Not at all impossible.

Comments

[diana]

Did you see the doco BALLETS RUSSES? Tamara Tschinarova says something at one point (sorry for pun), which may explain this issue, at least partly.

In describing the technical demands of Nijinska's ballets, she explained that they required strong batterie (the actual quote is "beaten steps" which she accompanied with a little illustrative clap of the hands). She claimed that batterie is (are?) now neglected with with the latter-day obsession being big jumps and multiple turns. She said you can't "smudge" this kind of technique. She clearly implied that a lot of dancers nowadays are incapable of doing this.

I don't think she was being a disdainful old bag - I think she has a point, and that her point may relate to what you are bemoaning with respect to pointe shoe technique.

[Haglund's Heel]

Hi Diana.

"Smudging" batterie is common in today's dancers, especially the women. They "tap" their beats instead of crossing them and rarely does one observe the articulation through the foot as it brushes out for a jete – possibly because of the clunky pointe shoes.

Watching Herman Cornejo work his feet and legs during batterie in La Sylphide last year just made it so clear what we are missing from nearly all other dancers. He was phenomenal!

- Haglund

[diana]

I saw Cornejo's Albrecht (to Xiomara Reyes' Giselle) a few years back. Marvelous dancer.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3181161.ece

"....she later danced in Symphony in C she did entrechat dix, a step rare even among virtuosi and virtually unheard of from a woman."

Imagine someone doing entrechat dix!! I don't see how that's possible.

[Haglund's Heel]

Thanks for the link, Diana. It's certainly hard to imagine entrechat dix. It's even hard to mark with the hands!

-Haglund

[IG NYC]

ballet is by the rich -- for the rich. and they make sure bc no one else can afford the 3-4 weekly pairs necessary to advance.

[Haglund]

Assuming that you are talking about pointe shoes when you refer to 3 or 4 pairs per week - if one is just a student and is wearing out 3 or 4 pairs per week, something is very wrong either academically or physically. There are professional dancers in U.S. companies who are not allotted more than 1 or 2 pairs per rehearsal week with which they might be dancing 7 hours per day.