How to Find the Perfect Ballet Shoe for Your Feet

Series Summary

Originating in Italy in the late 1400s, ballet is a beautiful dance that takes years of training to perfect. Ballet dancers train their bodies, investing years in dance schools, perfecting their jeté, their rand de jambre and their relevé. When everything comes together, the ballet is a spectacle of wonder, telling us the timeless stories of history and the human heart through measured expressions of fluid and beautiful motion. In this free video series on ballet, a gymnastic coach explains how to find the perfect ballet shoes.

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Rebeca. I'm here at Encore Gymnastics and Dance. And today I'm going to teach you how to find the right ballet shoes for your foot. First off, when you go to the dance store to find your perfect shoe, you always want to test it, by putting it on your foot and making sure it's almost as tight as a sock. Then we take our little ribbons, and they should be elastic or cloth, as long as they pull the drawstring nice and tight, and make sure that there's no space on either side or in the back. Some ballerinas choose to tie it in a bow, some tie it in a double knot and cut it off. What we do after we do the bow, is we tuck it in so that there's nothing hanging out. That way our line is never disturbed as we're dancing. We always want to make sure that there's no extra space in the top, or the back. As I said, ballet shoes are meant to fit like socks, so when we're dancing we don't step on any excess fabric or run into anything else on the shoe. Also, another thing to check is, if your foot is wide or if it's thin. These shoes are made for thinner feet. So a fat-foot person would have a very hard time pointing in it. Also, we always want to check if it's split-soled. Preferably, as a dance teacher, I always tell my students to get the split-soled ballet shoes because it does accentuate the toe point. The solid-soled shoes are okay for beginning students, but they tend to not allow the child to point their toe and show the line as properly as possible. And that is how to size your ballet shoe."