Twilight of the toe shoe makers

Just as with the wizened kimono makers of Japan, the master craftsmen at Freed of London, one of the world's most renowned fabricators of pointe shoes, are retiring, placing into jeopardy the feet of some the world's greatest ballerinas.

Jacob Hale Russell, in a December 23, 2006 Wall Street Journal story, takes us behind the curtain to the factory in East London where the heavy lifting — and pasting, pleating and stitching — happens.

Here's the piece.

Unhappy Feet: Ballerinas' New Lament

The retirements of master craftsmen at a storied cobbler in London are rippling through the dance world

Fred Turner is hunched over the workbench where he's spent the last 34 years, rapidly pounding on the pink-satin toe of a ballerina's pointe shoe. He's one of 17 cobblers in the cluttered, East London plant of Freed of London, a leading pointe-shoe company. Many of Mr. Turner's longtime colleagues have retired in recent years, replaced by younger workers now learning the trade. "Of the old makers, there's only a few left," he says.

It's a quiet changing of the guard, but one that is sending ripples through the ballet world. Dancers can go through two pairs of pointe shoes a day at this time of year, when they are enduring twice-daily performances of "The Nutcracker" and rehearsing coming productions. At many top companies, dancers wear Freed shoes almost exclusively — and in many cases, they're loyal not only to the brand, but to a particular craftsman like Mr. Turner, whose shoes are stamped with a distinctive mark. As many of these master cobblers have retired or slowed down, dancers are struggling to adjust to shoes they say can feel very different.

When the maker whose shoes she'd worn for 13 years retired a few years ago, "I was devastated," says Jenifer Ringer, a principal dancer at New York City Ballet. She's now found a cobbler she likes, but only after trying about a dozen substitutes — several of whom have since left or retired themselves. At times, she's worn her original pairs past the point when they've become frayed, rather than wear an unfamiliar pair. "It's like the princess and the pea: You can really be affected by it on stage," she says.

Similar situations are playing out backstage elsewhere. Regina Bustillos, assistant to the artistic director at San Francisco Ballet, estimates that five of the Freed makers most popular among her dancers have left within the last few years. That's led to backlogs of up to seven months for custom-fit shoes. New York City Ballet says two of its dancers are often critically low on shoes by a Freed maker known as "T." The stamps used by Freed's cobblers don't indicate their names, but bear an identifying letter or symbol.

Freed says, and dancers don't dispute, that the quality of its shoes hasn't changed. Instead it's an issue of artists who have become particularly accustomed to a specific maker's work. Freed says it expects dancers will eventually adjust to new makers.

In dance, perhaps more than any other field, shoes are critical. When on pointe, dancers have to balance their entire body weight on the two square inches of paper, fabric and paste that comprise the shoe's "box." The New York City Ballet spends $500,000 a year on about 9,000 shoes.oe.

Pointe shoes have been made in much the same way for decades, to specifications modified by early greats like George Balanchine. Several years ago, a company called Gaynor Minden introduced a new pointe shoe to some fanfare. Designed to be more comfortable and durable, the shoe is made with synthetic materials and a high-tech, sneaker-like interior, but it hasn't been widely adopted at many top ballet companies. Gaynor Minden notes that more dancers at major companies such as American Ballet Theatre have started wearing the shoes recently.

Freed's individually crafted shoes start at $80 a pair, though heavy buyers get a volume discount. That contrasts with about $54 a pair for shoes made by Capezio, which uses an assembly line approach for most of its shoes. Capezio's shoes are a staple for girls taking ballet lessons and are worn by many professionals as well. But a number of top companies as well as some ballet schools say they prefer individually crafted shoes, and some use Freed almost exclusively.

Grishko, a younger, Moscow-based company, uses one cobbler per shoe, but says its cobblers have a more unified approach and that it rarely gets requests for work by a particular maker.

Freed has only 30 makers at three plants in England, meaning even one illness — repetitive stress injuries are common — can have repercussions at dance companies around the world. One dancer at San Francisco Ballet refused to go on stage a few years ago because they'd run out of her customized shoes.

The job of helping the dancers find shoes that satisfy them is left to ballet shoe supervisors, like New York City Ballet's Angel Betancourt. Mr. Betancourt, himself a former dancer, comes in every afternoon to open his shoe room, where the walls are lined with bins labeled for each dancer. Dancers can take as many as they like. Before performing, dancers often jam their shoes in a door, bang them on the floor and step on them to break them in. Rehearsal rooms are filled with dancers in the midst of these rituals.

Darci Kistler, one of the best-known principal dancers at New York City Ballet and a 26-year company veteran, lost her longtime shoemaker, "V," to retirement. She "still hasn't found a pair of shoes she likes," says Mr. Betancourt. She's now dancing in "minorly defective ones" made by "V" that she'd previously rejected and sent into storage. The company said Ms. Kistler was unavailable for comment.

A pointe-shoe factory makes a marked contrast to the delicate world of ballet. At Freed's East London plant [below],



makers work eight-hour days with a half-hour lunch break marked off by a buzzer; some staff sleep at their desks and others keep working. The cobblers' room smells a bit like bread — the paste that's used to glue the box together is made of yeast, flour and sugar mixed in baker's equipment. Pop group Destiny's Child blares from a radio. A few of the cobblers have photos of ballerinas they manufacture for.

A shoemaker's style depends largely on the shape of his body, says Gary Brooks, Freed's ballet manager, who's been at the company for a quarter-century, since he was 18. "You have a guy with big shovels for hands making hard, massive, heavy shoes with a bulky platform," he says, "while a guy with smaller hands will form a completely different block and shape."

In the morning, makers pick up the tickets for their orders for the day. Using a foot-shaped mold, called a last, they attach the sole and upper material. The box is made by layering papier-mâché-like cards with the yeasty paste, and then making pleats at the toe



in the shape of a keystone bridge to better support a dancer's body weight on pointe. For the stitching, the cobblers use a noisy machine, made in 1964 and now irreplaceable.

The shoe dries and hardens overnight before it's taken to the finishing room, where a dozen people, mostly women, cut the material to size, stitch binding on, stamp the sole and send it to the shipping room. There, boxes are lined up for ballet companies from Alberta Ballet in Canada to the Norwegian National Ballet.

Thirty-year-old Pat Moran, known as "Key" maker, has been here 11 years; he stands at a workbench next to his uncle, who got him the job. He can tick off the names of many of his better-known dancers and enjoys getting letters from them.

He says he's lucky: When he started at Freed, there were more old makers to train younger workers. Now, with most of that generation retired, he's worried the newcomers won't get the necessary training. Mr. Brooks says younger workers can also be less reliable than their older counterparts, and are harder to recruit and retain. "It's hard labor," he says. "At the end of the day, today's young lads don't want to work as hard as older generations did. They're content in office jobs."

Newer cobblers also produce less. Mr. Turner, who is 55, turns out about 40 pairs of shoes a day, starting at 7 a.m. and working through most of his 30-minute lunch break. His less experienced colleagues average 25 or 30, Mr. Brooks says. Employees are paid by the shoe, and Mr. Turner says he takes in more than $950 a week.

When it comes to finicky preferences of dancers, makers say they're largely unaware of the subtle distinctions the dancers notice. "Having not worn any, I wouldn't know," says Mr. Turner. "But you do make them different for every dancer."

He gets the occasional Christmas card from a woman who uses his shoes, but he's still never seen his products in action. "Have a good look at me: Do I look like a ballet bloke?" he says "Seeing them prance around on stage, that's not for me."