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Advertisement If you owned a computer in the 80s, you almost certainly knew BASIC. Each microcomputer came with their own spin on the language, and it wasn’t uncommon to while away a Saturday afternoon copying code from a magazine line by line. The end product would almost always be some kind of game, or an interesting visual effect. It inspired an entire generation of coders.

Gambas architecture is inspired by Java. So Gambas is.Gambas is the name of an object-oriented dialect of the BASIC programming. PDF download of A. Beginners Guide to Gambas, Revised for Version 3, John.Gambas is a free development and runtime environment based on a Basic. A Beginners Guide to Gambas for. A Beginner Guide To Gambas Pdf. An acronym for Beginner's All-purpose. An Integer variable to hold the filenumber is declared and initialized with the Free.

But BASIC died around the same time the Commodore 64 did, and it wasn’t really replaced. As Windows came on to the scene, it was no longer required to write code in order to use a computer. Even if you wanted to, Windows didn’t really come with a BASIC-like programming language rolled in.

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Few people had computers at home, and those who did tended to have ones made by Amstrad, Atari, and Commodore; the giants of the era. These didn’t really come with operating systems as we now know them, but rather a minimalist approach to running code from tapes and jumbo-sized floppy disks. They also came with interpreters for a simple, human-readable programming language called BASIC. This allowed programmers of all abilities to make games and applications, and freely distribute them. In many respects, BASIC kickstarted the hobbyist developer market, and can be regarded as a spiritual ancestor to the modern day App Store. Firstly, syntactically (meaning, the grammar and structure of the language), it differs significantly to ‘old-school’ BASIC, adopting a similar structure to that of Microsoft’s Visual Basic language.

If you’ve used this, GAMBAS will be incredibly familiar to you. If not, you’ll probably have a bit of learning to do. Secondly, GAMBAS uses an object-oriented approach to programming, where the code is logically organized in ‘real-world’ terms.

This is incredibly unusual, given the BASIC languages of yesteryear used a more procedural style, where code is organized in steps to be followed sequentially. Finally, GAMBAS is more than just a language. It also comes with an IDE (Integrated Development Environment), as well as a toolkit for making rudimentary user environments.

It even supports QT, which is the engine behind a dizzying array of Linux applications, as well as SDL, which is the gold-standard of computer graphics engines. Surprisingly, GAMBAS also comes with a CGI engine, allowing you to make websites. I wouldn’t recommend this though, largely due to it being exceptionally slow, and GAMBAS lacking support common developer tools, including the likes of MongoDB (from 'humongous') is a cross-platform document-oriented database used as an alternative to MySQL. But what does that mean?, which is used by a variety of web applications to store data. How Can I Get It?

Well, this is simple. GAMBAS is currently available for Linux and FreeBSD, and can be downloaded from the repositories of your chosen distro. If you’re using Ubuntu, run sudo apt-get install gambas3. This will then install over 100 megabytes of data. If you’re on Windows, you can get it running with a bit of wrestling with Cygwin. It’s probably easier to use a VM, though. Then, it’s just a matter of diving in, and getting your feet wet.

A good place to start is with one of GAMBAS’s many templates, which make it easy for you to start coding without the laborious step of finding libraries and linking them to your project. Where Can I Learn About It? Codecademy is a new website slash interactive programming tutorial that walks you through the basics of JavaScript. While it hasn't been around very long, the site has already been generating a lot of buzz on.

Is very much a niche language. As a result, there’s not the same amount of learning material available for it, as there are for other languages. CodeAcademy haven’t (and almost certainly never will) written a GAMBAS course, and there are only two books about the language on amazon.com. With this respect, your options for learning this language are very limited. A good first step is the documentation, which is. Failing that, check out, by John Rittenhouse. This can be read online.

After that, try looking for open-source projects written in the language, and see if you can get a feel for the language from that. Great places to start include You have to think about where you intend to store your code. It's likely you've have heard of GitHub. That's not surprising. GitHub is used by individuals and enterprises to host code, collaborate on documentation., and its more popular cousin, As web developers, a lot of the time we tend to work on local development sites then just upload everything when we’re done. This is fine when it’s just you and the changes are small. Is It Worth Learning?

If you’re planning on learning a programming language in order to advance your career, GAMBAS shouldn’t be that language. In the real world, hardly anybody uses it as their working language. It just isn’t practical, on so many levels. Unlike a significant proportion of mainstream programming languages, code written with GAMBAS cannot easily be ported to Windows or OS X.

Furthermore, if you decided to learn GAMBAS with an expectation of there being an active, expansive developer community to learn from, you’ll be sorely disappointed. It’s also immensely impractical.

One of the core strengths of Python, for example, is the wealth of libraries available for it, which allow you to do anything from manipulate HTML, to build your own web servers. There’s nothing really like that for GAMBAS. I can’t even recommend it as When starting on the path of programming, it’s important you invest your time wisely in choosing to learn something that will both benefit you in the immediate future with visible results on your platform of.

Python and Ruby are both cleaner, less opaque and are actually used. There’s also a massive amount of learning material surrounding these languages, unlike GAMBAS, which is relatively limited in that regard. So, who should learn GAMBAS? Well, if your eyes go misty whenever you think of the hours you spent copying code from magazines in the 80s, you might get a kick out of it. But everyone else? Just learn Python.

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Is a writer specializing in dance and online content. She is also a dance instructor with over 20 years experience teaching in dance studios, community programs, and colleges.

She began in 2008, equipped with a passion for movement education and an intuitive sense that a blog could bring dancers together. As a Houston-based dance writer, Nichelle covers dance performance for Dance Source Houston, Arts+Culture Texas, and other publications. She is a leader in social media within the dance community and has presented on blogging for dance organizations, including Dance/USA. Nichelle provides web consulting and writing for dancers, dance schools and studios, and those beyond the dance world. I feel this is such an important subject among young dancers. When I was 11 and the time came for pointe shoes, I couldn’t wait and either could my fellow classmates.

Unfortunately, most of us weren’t ready and didn’t make it past one year dancing with them. It is hard to define readiness because it is different for every dancer, and can’t just be decided on by age. This post is something that should be widely publicized among the dance world, especially to more-than-eager dance parents as well. Thank you for this because it is something that needs to be addressed. You have great insight! -Rachel.

says. You are not alone, Rachel. Many, many dance studios are putting kids on pointe without the training to back it up.

I know what it is like to study and teach dance in a small town. There are some that would call it negligence (and in some cases, I suppose it may be) but often it just lack of informed knowledge of ballet it can be difficult in some places to find qualified and professional ballet instructors. Many studios operate on a model that includes pointe work simply because the studio they learned from offered it and the studio before them and down the line. It’s become such an expectation that there is a fear that students will leave if they aren’t allowed to go on pointe or if it is not offered.

And, well maybe that’s true but I also believe that a discerning teacher/studio or one brave enough to say “you know, we focus on recreational ballet study and pointe requires more intense instruction, so we don’t offer it,” makes a studio stand out for all the right reasons. Some may walk away but this studio will also draw to itself the kind of students and parents who will be getting what they need to be and feel successful in their dance study. They’ll be as Suzanne Gerety likes to say, “loyal raving fans” rather than frustrated parents wondering why they are investing in classes when their child still looks wobbly in pointe shoes after two years or students who feel more awkward than elegant when they sport their satin slippers. Excellent article.

I could say loads about allowing kids on pointe who haven’t had the right kind or enough training. My daughter got her first pointe shoes just before her 9th birthday, just after passing her Vaganova level 2 exams (administered from St.

Women in my family tend to have almost all of their growth by age 12 and start cycling at age 9 -11, meaning we tend to have the physical development of an 11-14-year-old quite young. And–this is the caveat–for the first several months she didn’t do much at all in them. She learned to sew on the ribbons; to store them properly; how to break them in. And she did lots and lots of exercises without them in order to strengthen the right muscles so she’d be safe in them.

She was passed into them because of her physical development, with the blessing of a podiatrist who works with dancers. For the next year and a half, if she had pointe work at all, it was no more than 1/2 hour a week (including warmup) out of a 12-hour-a-week schedule. I almost think that getting them was something of a motivational factor for the class, but the girls were handled with great care to make sure they were really solid before putting them on. She has now passed the level 3 exams, and next year her class will have an hour a week for pointe. And she’ll be turning 12 in the middle of the year. There have been kids there doing level 3 and even level 4 work whose bodies aren’t yet ready for pointe (usually bone development) that simply do the work in soft shoes until the docs pass them.

I think the oldest that this happened to was 13. At the same school where a couple barely 9-year-olds were passed. Most recreational schools aren’t going to have a podiatrist and teachers trained in physiology to know what to look for, so age 11 is a safe general guideline. But when you hear “The Russians put their kids on pointe at age 8!” you’ll know the truth. It’s not every kid.

It’s highly individualized. Given that sometimes even properly-trained 13-year-olds don’t have the right bone development yet, it’s a good idea to check with a podiatrist anyway, if you can find one used to working with ballet dancers.

You make an excellent point about individualized assessment from qualified teachers AND physiologists or doctors! Though you are right many schools do not have the ability to extend medical assessment as a service to their students, a school paying attention to the latest dance science recommendations would require all pointe students to be medically evaluated before beginning pointe. Yet another reason I feel many studios out there should reconsider or reevaluate their pointe program. Thanks for your comment and for stopping! Hi Nichelle Im so pleased to see an article like this published. As a pointeshoe designer, it is very difficult for me to develop appropriate footwear for the market, when that market contains dancers that should not yet be “en pointe”. One concern, for example, is the commercialisation of harder shanks that seem to be in demand from young bodies that dont yet have the strength to support themselves correctly.

While pointshoes are extremely subjective, and hard shanks certainly do work for many experienced dancers, it seems counter productive to have a 10 year old wearing rock hard pointeshoes and struggling to achieve anywhere near the correct line through the spine, hips and legs. We need to educate, so thankyou for spreading the word – Tim. says. Hi I was very interested in what you have to say about the hardness of pointe shoes. Do you not think that a lot of dancers going en pointe for the first time just are not ready.? I find that a softer shanked shoe can sometimes be extremely difficult for a new dancer to stand up in as you need a good core stability to hold you there.

I fit each dancer according to what is in front of me. Some dancers require more strength.

For me it is a dancers ability to be able to push over the box, and use the demi pointe break correctly. I find that many teachers do not teach the correct breaking in of pointe shoes also. I use a stronger backed shoe if a dancer is heavier. For me it is all about the shoe style. A higher arch with longer toes may need a longer vamp. It is such a difficult subject of which there is no right or wrong answer but to adapt it to what the dancer in front of you is needing.

I feel that too many dancers are in the wrong size of shoe, meaning that the arch does not adhere to the correct point on the shank. For me a lot of problems are caused by ouch pouches pushing them out of a box and requiring a shoe too wide and long for the foot. Its great to see a pointe shoe designer making comments on a page like this. So appreciated. Yes I absolutely agree with you, many dancers are going on pointe too early. At the end of the day a shank is only doing its job when it is conforming to the foot.

Having a rock hard shank that doesn’t bend is doing nothing except forcing more weight into the toes. And its the mentality of putting weak/young dancers in harder shanks that can cause problems. Its natural to think that a weak dancer needs a hard shank, but unless they are taught to break/bend these hard shanks correctly, the opposite is true. And that is where the core strength you mention comes in. Amanda says.

Tim you make a great point with the harder shanks. I believe that each student is unique in their needs, but most students generally speaking, should not need to begin their pointe work with super shanks! I think if there seems to be an increasing demand of harder shanks for young dancers, I certainly think there can be a correlation with students beginning pointe work too early, before they have fully developed the proper strength and technique to support themselves with a more appropriate shank. When I began pointe work, I was put in a soft shank, and I remember the majority of my class was the same, or had a medium shank.

I progressed through mediums, and then hard shanks rather quickly, as I have always had stronger feet and ankles naturally, and once I got into center work especially, I started “killing” my softer shoes at an abnormally fast rate. I believe that by starting a student in hard shanks, unless they have an individual circumstance that requires it, actually has the potential of pulling away much of the hard work the student did in pre-pointe, building up their muscles. With that initial shoes(s) being hard, a student can rely on the shoe itself instead of their own strength, and end up executing early pointe work poorly and progressing at a slower rate. Thanks for sharing your thoughts Tim! Amanda. says. I fit Pointe shoes and you have some fabulous, very important information here on your site.

I 100% agree with the importance of age and bone development. I do however see so much damage that has been done to young dancers feet and this is mainly due to the badly fitted shoes they are wearing. I see that you have a picture of a Grishko 2007 pointe shoe above? That foot also has an ouch pouch inside it, this means that the shoe has to be a 1/2 size to 1 full size, then add the extra width to fit the foot and pouch inside it thus making the shoe too big. When the dancer gets en pointe the foot will sink down the shoe causing stress on the growth plates on the dancers soft bones, plus with the extra width again the foot will spread down into the shoe. I am interested on what your opinion on the use of these ouch pouches are? I do sometimes think that some fitters have an easy job by using these inserts, it means that they can fit badly and easily because the insert is taking away any pain.

I take the minimum of 1 hour to fit a shoe, sometimes 2 for a first fittingI also wonder why fitters do not look at the line of the leg, making the shoe and leg look like one complete extension, instead of a leg with a big shoe on it. Ballet is all about lines and yet I am completely shocked why this line does not extend to the tips of the toes, I feel the eye should not even see the shoe on a dancer there making one beautiful line. I would really be interested to know your views or anybody else’s view on this, Many thanks in advance to you. Hi Linda, I missed this comment before but wanted to say thanks for sharing your thoughts and expertise throughout. I’m not really qualified to speak to all of the issues you raise here. (the image is simply a nice quality, freely licensed photo, so I have no connection to the wearer or fitter of the pointe shoe) However, it is my understanding that a well-fitted pointe shoe should not need an ouch pouch. Maybe I’m old-school in thinking that taping and perhaps a little lambs wool is a better solution for any necessary spot-protecting?

I think though that the majority of students out there in studios do not have access to or cannot afford qualified fitters or a more customized shoe. They get a little advice from their teacher or the store clerk and so, yes, they probably do end up needing an ouch pouch. This is yet another reason why I am an advocate for reexamining pointe programs at the recreational level. Hi Tim I can hear what you are saying re ouch pouches but I fit a snug shoe so I can take away the need for a pouch, but I will use items etc. That take up no further room in the box so as to get that snug fit.

In my experience an ouch pouch can increase the size and width required of a shoe by maybe a half size length and an X width box. Once the shoe has warmed and has that little give this then means a foot slides down the box. I require a dancer to be able to pull out of the box (using her core muscles) when she dances, if the shoe is starting out with room this is an impossible thing to do.

If a shoe is the exact length and width for the foot, it will work better en pointe. The area usually needing a little padding is the big toe as thats where the foot steers the shoe, but its good that we all have differing views, it all helps the dancer to strive for the perfect shoe.but the thinner the inserts the snugger the shoe. Amanda says.

Linda, I’m so glad someone mentioned the photo above. When I first came across the article, I noticed the issue with the ouch pouches and the ill-fitted shoes, and it was driving me crazy! I personally, have tried multiple avenues for comfortable padding options, that at the same time allow me to feel the floor, have a snug fit, and do not hinder my technique. It’s quite the task, with so many options, it adds a whole other issue with pointe shoe buying! When I first began pointe work, I started with tape, and some lambs wool. Those were really the only options that were presented to me. After some time went by, “Ouch Pouches” became the latest trend, (as if pointe shoe padding was a trend at all!?) everyone at my studio was trying them out, so of course, I went out and got them.

I danced with ouch pouches for most of high school, and no wonder when years later I came across my beloved collection of high school pointes, and decided to try them all on for a sentimental moment, none of them seemed to fit properly or comfortably with the padding I use now! (I know my feet also most likely changed but I do think the “Ouch Pouches” played a role).

After my “Ouch Pouch” days, I tried various brands of Gels. Some far too bulky, some that didn’t fit my wide foot properly, and some that even made my pointe work distorted looking because they didn’t allow me to feel the floor and sat in my shoe in strange positions. After many frustrations with Gels, I spent some time back with tape, and would stick tissues, and various little pads (like corn and bunion types) that I would buy from the drug store, and use them accordingly with the areas that were inflamed, or injured. Unfortunately, as you can imagine, this is not a fun route to take, as it seems silly to take action in your comfort after having do damage, rather than using preventative measures! More recently, I have returned to the Gel “World” in search of new and improved Gels.

I was able to use a blue, medium thickness Gel for a rather long time (I can’t remember the brand) and was pretty satisfied with them. They were the best I had tried, I could still feel the floor, and the nasty blistering, cuts, etc.

Were of course subsiding! I finally had to retire that pair, and I returned to the dance store with the anticipation of purchasing the same ones. However, the very knowledgeable store clerk recommended another kind, lighter weight, thinner, better fit, and clear, and I love them! (Made by Bloch) I think perhaps I have finally found the right padding for me! (Don’t want to say that too loud!) Now, to return to the never-ending quest of finding the perfect pointe shoe! Anyway, you didn’t ask for my life journey in the padding world, but I just wanted to say I highly agree with you in regards to the “Ouch Pouches” and I hope students know there are many options available, especially as years go on and more and more time is dedicated to the pointe shoe world. Thanks, Amanda.

Omer says. My daughter Alina will be 9 in a weeks time.

She started ballet classes 2 years ago advancing from Primary in Dance to Grade 1 (Royal Academy of Dance)and Grade 2 beginning this curricular year. She passed her RAD Grade one exam with “Distinction”. Last year she attended a two hour weekly course with a supplementary private hour (total 3 hours). This year she has augmented that to a total of 4 hours a week with 2 hours private tuition. She is working with a former Kirov ballerina who maintains that our daughter holds great promise. This year, as of January she would like to get Alina started with pointe shoes.

Alina is light and relatively “petite”, but has stamina and muscle strength. Nevertheless, taking your above guidelines as a general starting point, Alina should wait another 2 years until she is 11. While I am aware that providing advice from afar is difficult, going by your experience and gut feeling, would you recommend waiting at least another year, or based on the fact that Alina’s teacher is somebody who has actually graduated from the Vaganova Academy, danced at the Mariinsky and personally gone through the grueling professional dance world, she ought to know whether our daughter is up to the task or not. Thanks in advance for any insight you may wish to share. Hi Omar It sounds like your daughter is doing very well, congratulations. In my opinion, being a professional dancer doesn’t necessarily qualify you to make decisions on the safest route to a career on pointe.

Thats not to say that your teacher isn’t qualified, but from the qualifications you have listed here, I would look to get a second opinion. I myself am an ex-professional dancer, and I have spent the last 12 years studying, designing, testing and fitting pointeshoes on ballerinas around the world. And I would not consider myself qualified to advise on this issue. If you have access to a physiotherapist that works with dancers, it might be a good idea to combine their advice with your teacher to come to the right decision. Hello Omar, I agree with Timothy’s answer. Many top schools do not rely on a teacher’s assessment alone and work directly with physiotherapists to assess their pointe students. In addition, I’d like to point you to a resource from the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science (IADMS).

It is a document on pointe readiness: IADMS recommends age 12 but acknowledges that growth rates, maturity, and physical readiness are all relevant factors and vary from child to child. Growth from age 9 to age 12 and the changes occurring in the body are considerable. My thoughts turn to a former student of mine who was within that age range when she came back from a summer break inches taller, longer limbed, and working with an entirely new body.

She would not have been prepared for pointe upon her return. She was looking quite strong the spring before but hadn’t the strength now to control her longer limbs. She had to learn to work in her new body. I am no expert, I am no physiotherapist – I recommend consulting people who are.

In my personal opinion benefits to an early start at age 9 do not outweigh any risks involved, even if they are minimal. Waiting another year or two will only give her more time to prepare and refine her strength and technique, waiting won’t even put her behind other students. Omer, Your daughter’s teacher is probably in a better position to know than most teachers, but I’d still recommend taking her to a podiatrist who works with ballet dancers, and possibly a physiotherapist. While the teacher can see and tell whether or not her muscles are ready (and this is an important part of what teachers do at this stage), it takes an x-ray to see the development of the small bones of the feet.

That’s why the podiatrist needs to know what the development should be before working on pointe. My own daughter’s teacher is now working on her master’s in pedagogy through the Vaganova Academy, but this is an area which is covered in the basic certification. The girl I mentioned earlier was tremendously strong and light, and in fact sounds very like your daughter. But the bones in her feet were still soft, and going en pointe would have risked having the pressure of it bending the bones and crippling her. Her mom monitored her very carefully, having her feet x-rayed every few months, and then every couple of weeks as both the Nutcracker and the international competition loomed.

Her feet were finally strong enough just a couple of weeks before the first performance. She took it very easy despite that. There are some excellent observations made in these comments. Here are a few of my own, based on as yet.limited. experience with young students undertaking beginning pointe work.

First, when my school opened its doors in 2006, several kids from other area schools appeared at my threshold, wishing to take entire technique classes wearing pointe shoes. They were UNEQUICVOCALLY too weak for this.

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I consulted with Mignon Furman, who was kind enough to write out her thoughts on this practice; her letter hangs in a frame in my office. In a nutshell, what she said was, NO. She of course elaborated on this point, but her advice helped me a great deal, as I could simply refer to her letter when confronted with pushy moms or their kids who felt entitled to engage in pointe work against my advice. Ultimatley they either listened or left the school. Now that the school has started growing its own legs, so to speak, I have a younger population entering a second year of exposure to American Ballet Theatre’s National Training Curriculum; the Level 3-A class is untertaking beginning pointe this year. Pointe readiness received much discussion at the NTC training last summer, and even moreso this past summer at the Level 4-5 training.

Our mentor and co-creator of the curriculum, Raymond Lukens, had this to say last year: 1) Contrary to what we’ve all been told, there is no substantiated scientific evidence that starting pointe earlier than age 11 is necessarily harmful to a developing foot. 2) Having said that, age 11 is often an ideal age to introduce beginning pointe work. 3) If you can wait until age 12, that’s even better.

This past summer at the NTC Level 4-5 training, four girls from the JKO School Level 4 class gave an hour-long pointe demonstration–roughly a half-hour at barre, and a half-hour in centre floor. They were strong and lovely, and dancing well within the confines of what was developmentally appropriate for them. They were ages 13 and 14, but one of them told us that she had been a Level 4 student for 2-and-a-half years. The focus of the NTC is slow, careful technique building.

Pointe is introduced in Level 3 of the NTC, but it is very, very simple work given facing the barre, over both feet. Care is also taken to avoid a slow releve and a slow descent until the child is strong, because of the stress this places on the Achilles. Pre-pointe exercises are introduced in Level 1 of the NTC, and are designed to build strength in the feet, ankles, calves, knees, and anterior tibialis muscles. My own students get a LOT of work addressing strength-building in these areas. I am confident that my Level 3 girls–ages 11, 12, and 15–will do just fine this year in their half-hour weekly pointe class, and the 9-year-old among them will continue to work on three-quarters pointe in her demi-pointe shoes; they attend technique classes twice-weekly for an hour-and-a-half, and Pilates once-weekly for more intense strength-buildling in the core musculature.

(Note: my 15-year-old student came to me two years ago from another school, where she had been allowed to work incorrectly on pointe for some time. I was shocked: not only was she too weak, but also suffered from EXTREME hypermobility in the knees, and also subluxation of the kneecaps. The first thing I did was get her out of her pointe shoes. In the intervening years I have focused on helping her learn to stand and work correctly with those noodly legs and knees, making sure the heels are always together in first position, and to work doggedly on strengthening the knees; I allowed her to begin very basic pointe work second semester last year for fifteen minutes at the end of each technique class. She is working so beautifully now, and I could not be more pleased and proud of her for being willing to wait and take things slowly.) About the shoes. Well, there is of course so much to be said.

When I look at my own experience with pointe work as a young student, I am frankly pretty horrified. I distinctly remember my mom (who was at the time dancing professionally) arguing with my teacher that I should NOT be allowed to undertake pointe yet. I was nine, and lobbied vigorously with my teacher to be allowed to start. In the end, my teacher and I won the arguement, my mom relented, and I began–way too soon.

I started in clunky Capezio Niccolinis, and eventually later used both Freeds and Gambas, as my mom favored them. I was NEVER allowed to use any kind of cushioning because of mom’s old-school philospshy, which had been handed down to her directly from Celia Franca and Betty Oliphant at the Nat’l Ballet School of Canada.

So I spent years with horribly blistered feet and bruised toenails. I look back on those days and think that at least SOME kind of cushioning would have helped, as well as shoes that had been fitted professionally. In short, I think the agony was avoidable (and I never pass up an opportunity to tell my mom so). Now that I have been through the fitter training at Gaynor Minden, I must say I am very impressed with the product there and wish like heck those shoes had been available during my dancing days. I’ve been using them myself since 2006, and have now started fitting my own students in them.

For a beginning student, they offer more stability than any shoe I’ve had experience with. I also like the profile of the shoe–it is distinctly “un-clunky.” Unlike traditional shoes, there is no breaking in–the shoe does not change when you begin to work in it. There are six variables used in fitting the shoe (and five different shank strengths), so a properly fitted G-M is very close to a custom fit. I personally am not against using the Ouch Pouch Jr (or better still, the new professional version, which has no bottom), but using this or any other kind of padding must be taken into account in the fitting of the shoe. And G-M has a kit consisting of tiny, variously shaped cushions that may be applied in the bottom of the box to address particular trouble spots–for example, the outside edge of the big toenail, which may need a little extra attention. Having said all that, I am still a newbie when it comes to fitting others in pointe shoes, and I’m sure my own opinions will evolve over time. I appreciate all the advice and comments here.

Great post as always, Nichelle. Actually the closest you can get to a custom fit pointeshoe is one that is made from a water based paste.

This type of paste can be found in some pointeshoes manufactured by Freed, Bloch, Capezio, Suffolk and Gamba. Im sure there are other brands, but I dont know the paste make up to confirm. A pointeshoe that is constructed with a water based paste will start to return to a semi paste like state (a little like a very hard playdough) as the dancers sweats. This allows the box of the shoe to conform to the contours of the dancers foot inside. Once this transformation has taken place the idea is to dry out the shoe and paint shellac inside the box to water proof the shoe and prevent further degradation of the paste.

Many people think that shellac strengthens a pointeshoe. What it really does is water proof a shoe made from water based paste and makes sure it keeps its strength and maintains the custom shape of the dancers foot. Very often when I have fit professional dancers you can see the exact shape of their toes impressed inside the box of the shoe. This is what happens when the correct type of shoe is managed the correct way and it really is the closest thing available to a custom shoe. Gaynor Mindens boxes (and shanks) are made from plastic.

So there is no opportunity to get a custom conformation of the toes. They compensate for this by having a layer of foam in between the box and the foot, which is not unlike wearing a toe pad. Tim The shoes I fit are Russian and they are made with a starch glue (which is edible) I only will fit the one brand of shoe because I also can usually get a good snug custom fit for that exact reason, as the foot warms the glue softens and gives slightly. I also see the complete inprint of the foot inside the shoe after wear, this is why I will not allow shoes to be swapped onto different feet as some dancers are told to do. I will not put down any make of shoe as it is not my speciality but I do take a lot of dancers who come to me out of a plastic backed shoe. I find that they are far more lacking in foot strength as they do not have to “break in” the shoe at demi pointe.

Although breaking in a shoe is a tedious procedure for some dancers, it does me they gain intrinsic muscle strength (essential for good strong pointe work) also that the shoe breaks at exactly the correct point for their foot. I have many girls come to me with those shoes who have shoes way too big. I always thoroughly examine the bottom of each dancers shoes, they tell me the history of that shoe, if its too big, can they get over the box,rolling in or rolling out and much more.They may be good when a dancer has completed her training and knows exactly how to use her shoes and feet, but for a young dancer this is an important part of acquiring pointe work skills. For me a dancer needs to have more time handed to her for a shoe fitting, that way the right vamp length, box shape, shank strength can all be found. I am lucky enough to only fit pointe shoes and so I can spend 1 hour minimum sometimes 2 with each dancer on a first fit. You can never get the perfect results until a dancer has danced in the shoe, she can then give me her feedback,(for this reason also maturity is needed when doing pointe work) if its all OK then great, if not then my work starts, do I need to reduce vamps, change roll thro strengths etc.

All of which are open for me to do by my manufacturers in Moscow for a tiny fee. A pointe shoe needs to breathe then hung up and be dried after use otherwise the shoe breaks down and rots.Look after your shoes and they will last you well.

You cannot do this with a plastic shoe. I know when a girl enters my home if she has a plastic shoe in her bag as I can smell them LOL, also I wonder in this age of recycling where these shoes standare they eco friendly. There are many plastic shoes on the market, so please don not in anyway think I am putting down any one particular brand.

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I can only go on what each individual dancer presents to me during a fitting, but for me nothing can beat a handmade shoe made to traditional methods. Id love to hear your opinion on some of the pointe brands. I say let it out, and they can all learn from constructive criticism. Most of the pointeshoes Ive designed are for Bloch. Some of them are listed on my website.

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One of my favourite products is the Alpha pointshoe. After fitting 80 girls in the Royal Danish Ballet and School and hearing the 80th request to make the outsole shorter, I thought we needed to try something new. It was designed, and a dancer in the Australian Ballet (now my wife:)) spent 18 months testing it until we were happy to release it to the market. Whats your website address?

By the shorter outsole, do you mean a 3/4 shanked shoe instead of a full shank? We at Grishko have been using this very shank for a long time with the 2007 shoe very succesfullyI have now looked up the shoe on Bloch website.I like it, you also have a nice vamp and shoe shape, may I please ask how high the box is on it??? I find the problem with many shoes is the lack of height in the box, the metatarsal heads cannot then be safely encased in the shoe, thus causing bulging and an incorrect weight balance happens. This usually means an inability to push right over the box correctly, or damage to the me.