Today I had my first shift @ the shoe museum since early in April. It felt like much longer than that though. A new exhibition has moved on in during my absence - and it's all about ballet. Specifically ballet slippers [as one might suspect as it is the shoe museum, not the tutu museum - I'm not so sure that I would volunteer there]. We had a group of people come in from Iceland and after they had toured around a little bit they returned to the front desk with a question - did we have Baryshnikov's slippers? Huh. I did not know. My photographic memory allowed me to recall seeing something about this in the museum's quarterly newsletter and I was proven correct [yay brain! thanks for storing all that useless information!].
However, I don't like feeling stupid, even if it's just for a few moments. I decided that I should probably overcome my ballet prejuidice in yet another meaningful manner so I took a self-guided tour of On Pointe: The Rise of the Ballet Shoe. It was actually kinda interesting...I mean, I'm still no ballet fan, but I like learning how things are made and learning history generally. Here are some new things I learned about ballet:
- ballet slippers are not sold in pairs - they are called "straights" as there are no left/right slippers - they have straight sides
- ballet dancing was originally done in high heels [ouch]
- male ballet dancers dont wear the pointe slipper
- ballet dancers customize their slippers by "breaking" [literally busting them up, not breaking them in] them in some fashion
- ballet slippers might be worn out in just one performance [or sometimes more than one pair per performance]
- after they were initially introduced ballet slippers became incredibly fashionable/popular - just like today
To learn more about the exhibition, please visit The Bata Shoe Museum - either online or in person.
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