In my last post, I addressed the foot issue, and how shank strength depends on if you need extra stiffness to prevent yourself from going too far over and overly stressing muscles/tendons/ligaments, or if you need less resistance to compensate for a naturally less flexible foot and/or ankle. In this section, I'm going to talk about the second half of the list.
1. Do you have high, flexible arches that are prone to falling over the pointe? Or do you have an ankle that makes a straight line and a moderate arch (like mine)? Or do you have inflexible ankle that doesn't go fully vertical, and a tendency to not get over the box? (I imagine you could have combination flexible arch/inflexible ankle, but I have to admit I have not met many folks like this.)
2. Do you have strong feet, or weak feet? Strong ankles, or weak ankles? Often, but not always, natural flexibility and natural strength are in inverse relation.
3. Are you tall? Broad? Heavy? Tiny?
4. Do you have strong or weak hips, quads, and core?
5. What are you trying to do in your shoe? Fast relevés that you need to pop up for? Hops on pointe? A soft adagio? Long balances? Jumps? Repeated pirouettes? Les Sylphides? (That's the ballet that always comes up when people mention wanting a softer shoe...)
6. How badly do you not want to buy another pair of shoes in two days? (This, and this blog in general, applies to amateurs, not professionals, of course!)
Last time, I talked about strength in the feet and ankles. However, you need far more than just strong feet and ankles to dance en pointe.
While I do not recommend getting a harder shank and box in order to just "sit" en pointe instead of actually engaging, each dancer newly en pointe will have to find where their shoes are hard enough to enable them to dance, but soft enough to ensure proper technique and development.
Here's the description of Aspirations:
Bloch's Aspiration is built for students. This pointe shoe features a harder, more supportive box that assists the beginner. Its full shank is designed to flex at the "three-quarter" position.
The harder, more supportive box and full shank are helpful for balances, I've found. That is, once you're up on the shoe, it holds you up. On a new shoe, I have actually been able to disengage through the hip, core, leg--actually all the way down into the ankle and foot--and still balance on the shoe (on one foot, no less). I don't actually like this. It makes it hard to roll down, on top of the obvious damage this would do to my technique. However, if you don't actually have those muscles, this is a helpful feature.
I'm not saying that everybody should go out and buy hard boxes and shanks so they don't have to strengthen their technique and muscle tone! However, people max out their strength at different ranges. New students are still developing these muscles. Why would you get a shoe that you can't do anything on at all?
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The balancing point plays into point 5, which is "What are you trying to do with your shoes?" Here's a list of things I like to do with various shoes:
1. New, hard: strengthening two-footed elevé, working feet through each stage of the rise.
2. Fairly hard, but not new: hops on pointe, bouncy relevés where I don't have as much time to plié, bourrés, if I were to ever do a lot of partner work with long balances, probably this hardness until I developed the requisite strength to go down to number 3.
3. Middling, still with some resistance on the demi pointe: things with a lot of piqués, pirouettes, more "flashy" choreography that may be combined with smoother relevés, bourrés
4. Soft shank with smooth roll-through in demi pointe: things with a lot of relevés, things with lots of jumps (two bonuses: quiet, and less resistance going into the jump), fouettés, softer or Romantic choreography
5. Approaching dead: strengthening ankles, hip, quads, core with relevés and one-footed elevés; easy rehearsal
Giselle is an interesting challenge because of the infamous hops on pointe combined with the obviously delicate choreography. That's when you just go shopping for stronger legs and ankles.
My favorite shank strength is 4, with 3 close behind. At 4 I've also finally gotten rid of that hard box that comes with the Aspirations XD
If you poll the interwebs, you'll find very similar preferences among dancers. Here's what Paloma Herrera of the beautiful feet says. Here's what a bunch of dancers on a forum say.
Since I'm somewhat paranoid, and since I don't dance en pointe enough to kill shoes immediately, I have gotten into the habit of wearing shoes until they're just a little bit too hard for the role I want, calomining them (did you know that there are matte pointe shoes available??), and wearing them once or twice again to make sure they're where I want, and then "rinsing and repeating." That way I always have two or three pairs of shoes I could potentially wear for a performance, just in case something dreadful happens to one.
It helps that Aspirations are cheap, and I can get three pairs at once and wear them all until they're where I want them. In fact, I've just gotten one pair to number 3 on the above list. I'm going to finish sewing the next pair and start wearing them.
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Finally, there's the issue of how pointe shoes can cost anywhere from 40 to 100 dollars per pair. If you're not a professional, you don't have a shoe allowance. Remember the quote that I opened with? The one that said that Blochs are for beginners because they break in so fast? Well... if you can afford new shoes every week/day, that's not really a problem! If your combination of flexibility, strength, and dancing works best with a soft shank, that's awesome... except that shoes die. And then you go roll around in the bathtubs gold coins that you receive as a dancer and buy new shoes with whatever sticks--oh wait, that's right, there are no bathtubs of gold.
Professionals with their shoe allowances and strong feet and glorious technique can break in their shoes right where they want them, wear lovely soft shoes, and kill them in a day. But alas, we students and amateurs cannot afford this luxury.
Which is why Gaynor Mindens are supposed to be excellent (albeit pricy). The theory is that they start at one shank strength and STAY THERE. You don't have to get super hard shanks; Gaynor Mindens are offered through I think five levels of shank strength, from extra hard to nearly dead. But instead of going from nearly to dead to six feet under in one class, they will stay at nearly dead.
There's actually a girl at my studio that has strong (but not flexible) feet and ankles, is taller, and average weight (for normal humans, not dancers). I think she likes hard shanks because they don't die as fast on her, but if that weren't an issue, I think she would do better in a medium to softer shank.
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So, there you have it. Very strong feet, ankles, core, and technique... hell, everything... hold up the dancer, and require less support from the shoe. However, we are not these people. Or these people. Or these people. Nor are we rolling in money. That's okay! Do the best and safest with what you have.
Thank you for this article and also Part I. It is very informative.
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