Further Honoring My Ballet Lineage

I came across a rare vintage pair of pointe shoes recently: Ben & Sally’s Noi-z-less pointe shoes. The shoes date from the mid 1920s and the company is, I believe, long defunct (This is a problem with many pointe shoe brands: even if they are popular, they get gobbled up by larger brands like Capezio, Bloch, Freed, etc. In the 20s, the only world-wide brand of pointe shoe was Capezio, thanks to Pavlova’s patronage of the company. It took time for pointe shoe brands to catch up to developing technique. That’s always a hand in hand journey. These shoes are a real treasure. They have a suede toe, which was common at least through the 1950s. It was thought to reduce noise and extend the life of the shoe. I believe one can still find suede toe shoes — Selva in the 50s was a very popular model. I don’t like the suede. I prefer to darn my shoes to my specifications but as I said, as American pointe shoe companies were starting up, one can find many interesting modifications to what we’d recognize as a pointe shoe today. I’m particularly amused to find that dancers in the 20s had the same problem as dancers in my generation, as dancers now with the heels of their shoes slipping off (hence the elastic).

I am thinking for both my castrati and my dancer of profiling individuals every month. I’ve written before about certain dancers but I might make this a regular thing. One of the dealers from whom I buy pointe shoes, by the way, has a pointe shoe double signed by Nureyev and Fonteyn. I only really collect women’s pointe shoes and I’ve never liked Fonteyn (heresy, I know, but I rather loathe her), so I’ve let it pass, but if anyone is interested or wants to pick up much less expensive ephemera, this is an awesome, really awesome place to look. 

This weekend I’m going to see the final performance of NYCB principal dancer Megan Fairchild. She’ll be performing the lead role in one of the great comedic ballets: “Coppelia.” Here is an interview with her. She is a fantastic technician and has a very strong stage presence. I remember seeing her in this same role when I and my husband were courting. It’s a bitter-sweet thing to now be seeing her retirement performance. She is an important link in the chain of lineage that binds this tradition — that of ballet– together, one generation to the next through bodies, through pain, through shared exhilaration of touching the transcendent. As an aside, Ms. Fairchild attended both universities at which I teach and received her MBA at NYU where I received my first MA. I just think this is very cool, but she sounds from her interviews a thousand times more organized than I ever was. lol. 

Here  ^ she is in “Theme and Variations,” an extremely difficult piece (technically). You can read the article accompanying the image here. She has danced for a quarter of a century with NYCB and now is passing the torch. She has three children (something unheard of in my day as a dancer, just like going to college. When I danced, we were told it was a career or school, not both; and children could wait until retirement. I still get absolutely appalled when a principal dancer takes time off to have a child– and I know is just the way I was trained, one of the unhealthy things of dancing in my generation. In my day, at the companies where I worked, it would have been read as not being serious about one’s art. I think it’s a good change though and apparently with development in kinesiology, dancers are coming back from pregnancies thin, with pelvic girdle strong, and with a strong core. I think that in the old days (lol) we didn’t know how to achieve the last two things so well. Now dancers talk about it and there’s much more care given to PT, kinesology, and recovery. I’m glad this has changed). According to one of the articles I’ve read about her retirement, she and her family plan to move to France to ensure that her kids grow up bi-lingual (her husband, I believe is French). She’ll work as a repetiteur, one who sets ballets, in this case the Balanchine ballets she has danced, and maintains the integrity of the choreography. “Coppelia” is a perfect ballet for her, a perfect reverence to her time in service to this art. For those wondering, yes, I have two pair of her pointe shoes, both pairs signed. I’d post a picture, but they’re wrapped up in acid free paper and packed away in archival boxes. 

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