For our series Ask A Dance Teacher, we asked ballet teacher Johanna Hadley some common questions about ballet training.
Our question was, “How can we make our ballet shoes less slippery?”
Watch our video and find out:.
Check your dance floor
If you are struggling with slippery ballet shoes the first thing I would recommend that you do is to check the flooring that you're dancing on. I've normally found that it's not actually the shoes that are causing the problem but the flooring. So check for things like, is the flooring clean or does it have a layer of dust and dirt on it. Or is it a highly polished floor, because all of these are going to make your ballet shoes feel a lot more slippery.
Dampen the sole of your ballet shoes
For the next two methods I would recommend speaking with your dance teacher first, because they can damage flooring especially if you've got specialist dance flooring in your room. So do check these methods with your dance teacher. I found these next two to be very useful. My first suggestion that I have for making your ballet shoes less slippery is to actually dampen the sole of your ballet shoes. Now we don't want the shoe to get wet, it's just the sole of the shoe here that we're wanting to dampen. The best way to do this is to use a paper towel. Just a damp paper towel and you can either wipe it on the sole and the heel of the shoe, or if you pop it on the floor and step on it, it will make the sole of the shoe a darker colour. It really does make a huge difference for just giving that little bit more stick to your shoe as you're dancing. Just be aware that as soon as it dries out, it will go back to being slippery again.
Use rosin to help reduce slippery shoes
My final suggestion for making ballet shoes less slippery is to use rosin. Now this is something that has been used for many years by ballet dancers it's used particularly for point shoes, especially when dancing on modern floors. But it's also really good for flat ballet shoes. Now as I did mention earlier on in the video, do check with your dance teacher because if you have a specific dance flooring you can't use rosin on those floorings. This would only be ideal if it's say like a wooden flooring. You can either buy rosin like a ready crushed form. Get a little tray, sprinkle some rosin in it and then you can just step in it. It does create a little bit of a cracking sound but it creates a much more resistance underneath the shoe. Just be careful you don't put too much on because it can also then go to the other way where you can actually start getting stuck as you're dancing. Alternatively you can just get it in a solid block form like you would use for a violin. Crush it up yourself and put it in a tray as before.
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