My Tango Diaries

Those shoes aren't made for walkin' . . . While they have ankle straps for support, the platform bottom reduces the ability to flex the feet. The wearer isn't stable (either because the heel is too high or the shoe is poorly balanced) because her toes are "gripping" the shoe. She has no room to spread her toes increasing her instability. I've been overwhelmed with emails so I've gotten behind on responding to this topic. A lot of the questions have the same answers, so I'm going to share them here as well as answer in pm or email, because there seem to be so many common threads. 1. If, when wearing your tango shoes, you cannot put all 5 of your metatarsals (the joints of the ball of your foot) evenly on the ground when you walk, you won't be dancing at your best. This is basic biomechanics - the ball of your foot needs to be completely on the floor to achieve stability.  The same goes with being able to move, and spread, your toes.

Dancing is the poetry of the foot.  - John Dryden My feet are stronger than they have ever been in my life. I can not only maintain demi-pointe (balancing over the balls of my feet) on one or both feet for several minutes at a time, but now I can do it almost completely perpendicular to the floor (half pointe). I couldn't raise my heel more than about 3 inches a year ago.  I worked and worked and worked my feet to build strength and flexibility for one purpose - to wear ever higher stilettos and be stable.  Now that I can articulate my foot and maintain my balance in ridiculous-height shoes (5"+), I find I don't want to. Training my feet to tolerate, and dance well in, high heels actually required me to dance, train, and exercise barefoot. A lot . This was a surprise to me but all of the dance-field trainers told me that was really the best way to train. Shoes of almost any kind restrict the movement of your feet. To really develop the intrinsic musc