Why Pointe Shoes Cost the NYC Ballet Nearly $1 Million A Year | Big Business | Business Insider

[Music] this is how a professional ballerina customizes her point shoes for a show destroy them basically everybody else it looks like we're destroying them just bang it out a little bit it's actually kind of fun I enjoy it kind of but after just one day of rehearsing and Performing leaps turns and pirouettes the shoes will be completely unusable this isn't used to that's why New York City ballet dancers go through about 7,000 pairs every year and all of them come from freed of London which has been one of the world's leading ballet shoe manufacturers for

nearly 80 years we supply all over the world there really isn't a country that we don't work within some capacity its methods haven't changed much over the decades every single shoe still has to be formed and stitched mostly by hand but this traditional approach makes it hard to keep up with the non-stop demand from some of the largest ballet companies in the world we are constantly playing catchup now some Sho makers are saying it's time to update the century old design there's a lot of unnecessary pain that modern materials can alleviate so why did ballerinas

go through so many pairs and why haven't the shoes changed much in over a century we went behind the scenes with the New York City Ballet and freed of London to see how point shoes became such a big business this is the NFL for ballet it's no different than like a football player except we have to look really pretty while we're doing it the Nutcracker is the New York City Ballet Super Bowl bringing in about $20 million per season rehearsals start only 2 weeks before opening night I'm so excited I'm so excited we have six

weeks of Nutcracker shows that means ballerinas like Grace shffle will likely break in a new pair of shoes every single day during the shows run it's honestly the rehearsals during the day that kill your shoes we typically run it at least two or three times per rehearsal when you think about the idea of the amount of things that we do on our toes it's not something that humans are supposed to do by the end of a rehearsal and only two wees this is what Grace's shoe looks like so the fabric on the tip of the

Box usually goes first and then I can see kind of the wear and the dirt and the rosin kind of building up and the inside of the shoe the New York City Ballet spends nearly a million dollars a year buying point shoes for its dancers and Daniel Wong is the only one keeping track of them all right now I have about 9,000 pairs of shoes in this room a point shoe has three main sections the Box the vamp and the shank also known as the soul the box is what makes a point shoe well a

point shoe it helps create the illusion of a dancer being on the very tip of their toes this has a platform right here that the dancer can stand on the vamp covers and supports the toes as they bend the measurement has to be very precise so that it doesn't get in the way the shank supports the dancer's Arch while on point strength of the shank can be different depending on what the dancer wants so really every single piece of the shoe can be customized while a dancer is on point the pressure on their feet and

ankles feels like 12 times their weight so if the fit of the shoe is even a little bit off it could be dangerous you can injure yourself if you're not wearing the right shoe you can injure yourself if a shoe is too soft for your foot so it's just important to find you know a shoe that fits you really well hello hello how are you good how are you I'm good dancers have preferences my job is to make sure that they have shoes that they're comfortable with but also don't get them injured which one should

we start with we're going to do a 4 and 1 half heel pin this a heel secure I wouldn't mind raising it I wouldn't say no to that see I like that that's so much sometimes okay finding the perfect fit can take years and answers go through many trial pairs before landing on the right one it's so much oh my God that's so much better it's so much better and I feel better in them you can kind of see there's like a 90° angle I don't know how to show it but there's like a 90

degree angle that's like one of the customizations that I really like just cuz standing on it and then rolling up to point is feels a lot better I've already had a few Customs come in with these specs meaning like the size and how short I wanted it which one is that this is without cutting it this is the four and a half the four and a half but the but but this trial pair still isn't perfect if I can do this it's a little bit too loose she'll be able to wear them but you know

they're not they're not the best it's not the best fit while Grace waits for her Customs she has to modify her trial shoes on her own everyone's feet are different so everybody kind of has a unique thing that they do to their shoes you could find all sorts of tools in Grace's dance bag rubbing alcohol this is to break in the shoes this is jet glue basically so we put this in the tips of our shoes to keep the shoes hard this is what makes it all possible and I go through this quite quickly Grace

can spend 30 minutes Breaking In Her Shoes destroy them basically everybody else it looks like we're destroying them I'll stick the scissors in and then just rip it apart and then I cut it so I hold it I put my heel down and then there we go that was a pretty good F scraping the bottom of the point shoes makes them less slippery even though it's a lot to do this is what works best for me that is what a new pair of shoes kind of looks like the boots already I do feel a little

bit bad cuz I know they work so hard on them so yeah the New York City Ballet buys all its shoes from freed of London one of the first companies to customize shoes to dancers feet back in 1929 Mr freed had been a point Sho maker for another company and he wasn't very satisfied with how the shoes were being produced before Mr freed the point shoe was very much one size one width so a dancer had to squeeze their foot into it and he came up with this concept which seems so normal today of making

different width fittings they all start with stapling a leather sole to a mold and this is where the consisteny comes into it to make sure they're all the same shoe makers like Alan dhy make custom shoes for specific dancers he's currently assigned to more than 600 ballerin he is really one of our most popular makers but the factory only has 24 shoe makers who make customs and they Supply some of the largest ballet companies in the world including the Royal Ballet in London the American Ballet Theater and the Paris Opera ballet we are constantly playing

catchup many of our Point VI makers their work schedule is booked right through to the end of 20126 when a maker retires um we start planning nearly 2 years in advance where we start to look at what other makers um are similar in their characteristic of shoe and looking at how we can transfer and move dancers from one maker to the other still freed manages to pump out about 2500 pairs a week most of the process is done by hand here comes a messy bit the founder of the company friederick freed himself created the past

that makes up the box which the company keeps secret it's basically flour water and a few secret ingredients which I'm not all to tell it's like putting your hand in porridge the paste is what makes the shoes so malleable adapting to the exact shape of a dancer's foot but it's also why they wear out so quickly Allan can make 34 pairs in a single day everyone makes different amounts um some make 28 some make 30 some make 32 other do 34s one does 41 putting in the pleat is the hardest and most crucial step what

this consists of is twist and pool is what gives them the strength the P we try and be fa as best we can it is a handmade job so we can't be perfect all the time now they're ready for stitching so and stitching are the only steps where they use machines most of our competitors have now closed their home or native production and moved offshore and gone into a much more automated um sort of machine made approach but we still are true to the beginning idea which is hand making shoes bespoken shoes giving the dancer

what they need but point shoes haven't always been made the same way when ballet started in 15th century Italy dancers wore shoes with heels but in the 1730s Maki kago a dancer with the Paris Opera ballet removed them so she could move more freely then in 1796 the French dancer and choreographer Charles Dello invented a wire rigging system that lifted dancers to make it seem like they were floating on the tips of their toes for decades afterwards dancers tried to create the same effect without wires at first they stuffed their soft slippers with wool and

use their own strength to stand on their toes in the late 19th century Italian shoemakers added a toe box to help support the dancers's weight and in the 1900s the Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova added stiff leather Shanks to support the bottom of her feet by the 1920s her design had become standardized as the modern Point shoe but some point shoe makers say it's time to update the century old design basketball players aren't wearing Converse anymore tennis players are not using wooden tennis rackets ballet dancers are the most elite athletes of all shouldn't they benefit

from Modern materials Eliza Minden started working on a modern design because of her firsthand experience as a ballet dancer when I was finally allowed to get my first pair of point shoes I was so disappointed at how painful they were and that put the idea in my mind that it shouldn't have to be this painful now her company Gainer Minden in New York City says it sells shoes that can last five times longer than traditional ones so in a traditionally made shoe the toe box which is part of the support is made of some kind

of paper product gor Minden has a synthetic shank midsole and toebox unit this is a thermoplastic elastomeric this is the kind of material that you find in scuba fins it will not break so you can Flex it like this over and over and over again and it won't break it won't weaken it basically won't change the sock liner is very resilient it never bottoms out and it's extremely comfortable we also use poron here under the heel which makes it much more comfortable so when you land from a jump your heel comes down you're not getting

the edge of the shank digging into your heel start your Hing um welcome into gu um you can take see here get your right foot into here dancers get fit in a similar way they would for traditional shoes and Gainer Minden offers dozens of customizations so the shoes I have been wearing them since February so about 8 months now uh of course I have other shoes that I rotate them with uh but they will last you a while which is great and because the shoes have flexible material and no pleats dancers don't have to break

them in you don't really have to do a lot of work just maybe like sew your ribbons and elastics and you're good to go there was a time when Gator minons were called cheatah shoes because dancers felt that they allowed you to just park up their on point and not engage your muscles and use them correctly any shoe that is too stiff can be a cheater shoe doesn't matter what it's made of today Gainer Minden provides shoes for dancers at over 200 ballet companies around the world but Eliza says that changing Minds in the industry

is still an uphill battle it wasn't until around the year 2000 was when we began to really grow and we expanded internationally a great deal ballet is very very traditional I think dancers were skeptical of anything that offered to make their job easier the left and right we have to win over our customers one at a time but for Grace freed shoes still set the standard for me it's the best shoe to dance in they're really pretty and they're not bulky they're a small shoe that just is like a little addition to your foot I

like that we have cardboard in ours just because the shank bends more and it just it molds to your feet more everybody does so many different things I feel feel like it would be hard to create a modernized version that fits everybody's taste for the type of dancing we do every single step is thought about and is done and is rolled through by your feet so Freeds really allow us to do that most other point shoe companies do customizations but maybe not to the degree that that free does because at the end of the day

it's all about the dancer and what makes her her perform her best they're not meant to be these like super comfortable like shoes they're meant to help you dance on Dance on your toes they've got to be a little bit uncomfortable in order for you to do that it's painful but it's also I mean you get used to it for the night of the performance point shoes shouldn't only be comtable they also need to look the part and that's Tim Foster's job hey if I could possibly sure awesome this is what happens all the time

they'll be about 20 minutes they'll be up here I get all kinds of little notes this one is uh hi Tim um may I have these dyed a light flesh tone thanks Gabby a yellow marzipan please for both shoes Lauren Colette so they leave me notes and tell me what they they need some of the shoes need to be dyed to match a dancer's skin tone others are painted to match their costumes during Nutcracker season Tim paints over 100 pairs in a week many times they'll get them a day ahead of time there's a few

times where they come the last minute but it's you know if I'm available we just do it and they take them run beautiful yes what would happen if it wasn't dry in time um if it's always dry in time it has to be dry in time you can't just bring your shoes up 30 minutes before the show and expect that they're ready in time they have to you have to like really think about okay I need shoes for this I am dancing this this and this this week I have to make sure I have at

least two pairs or something before Showtime Grace does a final break-in to make sure her shoes are ready when you bang it on the wall you're really just softening the body of it so that it's not as loud when you dance on stage for grace these shoes have helped her reach a dream she's had since she was a [Music] child at my fifth grade graduation there's a video of me saying in the future I'm going to be a professional ballet dancer with the New York City Ballet and it happens and I'm I'm very lucky and

happy that it did happen I un button at all in the back I thought I no really thank you once we're in our costumes you see everybody backstage just warming up their feet making sure that they like feel super comfortable in their shoes um and that they look good it's just making sure that you can do what you need to do in that pair of shoes there's nowhere else in the world I'd ever want to be [Music] the dream is to be a [Music] principal but I mean I feel like already being here I've accomplish

like one of my dreams which is being in the company I would like to make people feel something when they watch me because I remember watching people when I was younger and being like oh my gosh like I want to make people feel like that it's such a beautiful art form but it's such an athletic art form too this shoe is an addition to a dancer a dancer is themselves and they're so incredible by themselves the point shoes just Aid them [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]