A Dance Shoe Is As Much Science As Art

Most of us take our first steps in life at the age of approximately 1 year old. Almost at the same time when we have learned to walk, we may start reacting to music and begin dancing. Walking becomes our usual physical activity and only some of us all continue to dance and take it to a hobbyist or professional level.

No doubt you will certainly agree that there is difference between walking and dancing. Then you will neither refute the fact that a street shoe is not the same as a dance shoe. You can probably go out wearing dance shoes and feel comfortable, but you can’t achieve success on stage in street shoes.

Proper footwear is critical for dance. All the body of a dancer participates in dancing, but the biggest responsibility often falls on feet. Whether you dance ballet, jazz, tango, latino, tap dance or any other, you may need to spin, jump, turn, step, slide and so on. No matter how a dancer uses his or her legs and feet, dance shoes must give maximum comfort to the dancer. The best dance shoe is the one that seemingly ‘merges’ with the dancer’s foot and creates an extension of his or her bodyline. In contrast to street footwear, dance shoes are designed to be lightweight, extremely flexible and at the same time stable. When all these characteristics are to be taken to consideration by a tailor, it is your responsibility as a purchaser to pay attention to how shoes fit your feet.

Comfort is the most important factor when buying shoes for dance. If they don’t fit properly, their style, colour, and other characteristics will not actually matter. A dance shoe should be snug. Incorrect fitting of dance shoes may lead not only to unwilling mistakes on stage, but also to serious damage to a person's foot. That is why tailors try to produce shoes giving enough support for keeping balance and control of movement.

Depending on the nature of dance different materials are used for creating dance shoe soles. For spinning and sliding, for example like in salsa or rumba, soft leather or suede soles are made. Such shoes are very flexible at particular points to allow maximum comfort of flexing.
Leather hard sole is used for tap dancing or particular types of ballroom dancing. These shoes’ construction is less flexible and there is a metal plate at the sole, which protects a foot from damaging.
Shoes with sticky soles serve for faster types of dance with quick starts and stops, like in cha cha.
Talking about comfort and safety, it is worth mentioning dance shoes with heels used for clog or jazz dance. The design of a dance shoe on a heel focuses on combination of the heel size and the sole structure to create a stable platform, where the body weight distributes on the whole foot without giving extra pressure to toes.

Shoes for dancing should be chosen very carefully. No one guarantees you will become a champion if you get the most expensive pair, but be sure that bad quality may affect the freedom of performing a dance.

Taking all said above into consideration, we can definitely see that dance is art, but we can also conclude with no less assurance that a dance shoe is a field of science with wide prospects for studying.