October 27, 2006

A Scientific Approach to Reducing Pointe Shoe Noise

I like this post from Gwyneth at The Winger:

This hallway Gretchen is standing against was located just behind the stage of the Harris Theater, and it quickly became the designated place for all of us to “bang” our pointe shoes. Sound weird? Let me explain…

After our first stage rehearsal on Tuesday, we discovered that the acoustics in the Harris Theater were really quite spectacular. This was great news for the orchestra, but it actually became a bit of a challenge for the dancers. Our pointe shoes made so much noise that when we ran across the stage in “Serenade”, we sounded more like a herd of elephants than a group of ballerinas.

In order to remedy this, we quickly took to banging our pointe shoes before every performance. By hitting the tips of our shoes against a hard surface, our shoes softened up a bit and made much less noise when we wore them on the stage. I think it must have been a funny sight to come backstage during intermission and see a bunch of ballerinas forcibly hitting their shoes against a cement wall. Oh well, it did the trick!

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