My dancing shoes are
latin shoes.
They are smooth and black. They are made by Supadance, and I think they were imported from England. They are dance size 8, and cost about $100. I haven’t worn them for a while.
When I was wearing them, I liked the heel. It gave me height, and a good line to my legs. There was also the special feeling of being able to pivot on them!
The innovative thing about dance shoes is the sole--it is made of felt. (This is the same material as the head of the hammers in a piano.) The felt allows the shoe to grip the floor, for in dance you neither want to slide across the floor unimpeded, nor do you want to stick. Shoes that really stick are as bad as shoes that just slip. The best place is in the middle, somewhere.
To keep the felt in shape, one needs a metal brush, the same as the one piano technicians use to keep the hammer felt in shape. You scrape the felt when it has been
smoothed down hard--then the shoe slips. When you scrape the felt, it makes its soft, and it will grip the floor.
It is this inbetween that allows the most marvelous feats of dance. Think of them like a ouija board.
Sometimes with a partner it is just the gibberish that a ouija board all too often spurts out.
Sometimes, there are the hohum messages that are hardly worth the time to read.
Then there are the times the secrets of the universe are revealed. It doesn’t even matter what is being said. It is the illumination itself, that is important.
These are my good dancing shoes.