MayKwok

In addition to the great advice from Anjuli_Bai: Do you use the one pair or do you have more than one pair on rotate? I generally found that my shoes fare better if they have more time to air-dry, and if possible you could look into having 2 pairs on the go at the same time, and rotate, so that you have 3 days in between each wear for each pair? Also maybe look into jet gluing / shellac your toe box, as you mentioned you could feel the floor with your big toe, maybe the box is going before the shank? Have a search on the forum first, I'm pretty sure there are some threads covering this. I've always done the hardeners on the inside of the shoe instead of outside to avoid slipping, and the type of hardener you use will be personal preference + trial and error in general I'm afraid..! Hope this helps?

In my experience every 3/4 months is pretty good going for a pair of pointe shoes..!! How often do you dance en pointe and how long is each time you use them? (Obviously you'd expect a pair to last longer if you're doing once a week for 1 hour, vs daily for 8 hours each for example)

JustBallet does some!

She had plenty of fire when she did Gamzatti!

There was a recent discussion on this: http://www.balletcoforum.com/index.php?/topic/7102-advice-on-soft-pointes/

What I've done needs to come with a "test with an inconspicuous area before applying to whole shoe" I own a pair of Bob Martin soft blocks from the time before he sold to Bloch. His shoes were very similar to Freeds. I chucked mine into a washing machine, and it's worked wonders. There were no hard edges to the shoe at all, nice and quiet. I did my Advanced 1 and 2 exams at headquarters and was not questioned about the shoes at all. I think whether to use water or surgical spirit depends on the type of glue in the shoe. I forgot which type should be used for grishkos, so really test out in a small area before plunging the shoes in! My 2 pennies. S*F

Personally I have only requested privates with teachers that I've had group classes with. This way as I student I know how the teacher works and the teacher already kind of knows me. This way from the get go in the private class, the teacher already has an idea of what I need to work on. Private lessons are expensive and I feel I get more value for money if the teacher doesn't need to spend time figuring out what I actually need. Hope this makes sense? Thanks, S*F

And might this possibly be how not to do a dance advert?

One of the reasons why I love watching ballet is that each dancer brings a different flavour to a role. They might do this by their own projection / acting / expression, but sometimes they achieve this by actually changing the steps. So every Odette / Odile is different. Every Aurora is different. Sometimes this interpretation works with the overall narrative, sometimes it doesn't. And it makes me then think why one particular interpretation worked and another didn't. And also leads to the question of if we can really still say "choreography by Petipa" because over time the choreography must have changed so much. What I wouldn't give for a time machine to go back to the Petipa era and see those ballets when they first premiered. Sorry might have gone off topic a bit...!!

Ah Mimi I think Viengsay might have cut that out...! This one by Sylvie has a grand jeté after the lame duck. And this one by Natalia Osipova: But Cynthia Harvey doesn't travel the jeté as much but the back leg is still high (starts at 1:49) Cynthia Harvey In Kitri: (I've tried to fix the embedding but I couldn't. I think there might be YouTube settings on the clip itself preventing it)

Michelle I've gone onto YouTube to do some searching on Le Corsaire. Do you mean the 3rd odalisque variation, the series of arabesques and pirouettes down the diagonal? As for Kitri's variation in act1 of DonQ, do you mean the jump that comes right after the double lame duck, or the big jump that has the head back? (May be better known as the Plisetskaya leap?) (I apologise for the geekiness. I spend hours watching ballet on YouTube. Started off as procrastination and now one of my favourite past times!) S

Yes, I find that sometimes too! On the other hand I've seen a video of Tamara Rojo doing fouettés completely on time with the music, can't check which one it is now as I'm in the office, might post it later today.

I'd say if the turn was initiated with a fouetté action of the leg then it would qualify. Interestingly the Royal Ballet has a video dictionary of fouettés:

Apparently I have decent feet. And... that's it.