**We are so happy to introduce Jessica Klanderud, a Professor of African and African American History and a ballet parent to two kids! Jessica was kind enough to share her newly developed method for dyeing point shoes to match skin tone. For anyone dealing with trying to match colors on tights and shoes this is a game changer! Read on for how she decided to figure this all out on her own.
“I don’t understand why it’s a big deal… Pointe shoes are pink. It’s not a skin color thing…She can just pancake her shoes. The matte skin color shoes are too contemporary. It’s just not classical ballet.”
These are all real answers I received every time I’d raise the question about skin tone pointe shoes as my daughter was preparing for her first pair. She was so excited to get her first pair of beautiful satin shoes, but her feet needed a different shoe than the ones that were commercially available in skin tones.
When my daughter started dancing en pointe I was surprised to see the continued lack of representation in pointe shoe colors available. Even with more dancers of color in professional ballet, most dancers were still pancaking their shoes with makeup.
We went to Chicago thinking a bigger city would give us more options and discovered that even the largest ballet shoe producers in the United States could only promise skin tone shoes in 4 to 6 weeks – at a minimum! As a custom order the wait was even longer. And that’s only if skin tone shoes were even available at all.
Many dancers have to color their own shoes so, I wanted to develop a method that is easy enough for even a beginner pointe student to manage. I scrolled through YouTube for tutorials on how other dancers colored their skin tone shoes. In that search I came across a short video from the costume department at the Royal Ballet about how they dye shoes for their performers. I decided that dye would be the best approach. I had used misting spray bottles for a million different purposes in my crafting area and household. The idea to use a spray bottle for applying the dye was born.
Then came the hardest part. Many dead and discontinued pointe shoes were used to test color recipes as I developed the six colors that I have created. The goal is to create color recipes to match the skin color tights produced by major manufacturers. This dying method helps dancers customize their pointe shoes to enhance their leg line, it also brings a shiny, satin classic look in the dancer’s appropriate skin tone. Girls of color are allowed to feel beautiful too!
I intend for this process to be a crowdsourced solution that helps make ballet more inclusive for all dancers. That’s Our Pointe… open source info on dying pointe shoes for the entire ballet community. Please feel free to comment your questions and updated recipes as we grow this community together.
About Jessica: Dr. Jessica D. Klanderud is the Director of the Carter G. Woodson Center for Interracial Education and an Assistant Professor of African and African American History at Berea College. She received her master’s degree and PhD in History from Carnegie Mellon University where she studied African American History, American History, Comparative Slavery, and the History of Poverty in America. She is currently working on a manuscript entitled, Struggle for the Street: Civil Rights in Pittsburgh, from a Place to a Movement, a study of formal and informal power on the streets during the Civil Rights Movement in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on neighborhood street-level dynamics of class and race as African Americans defined their own spaces in the twentieth century.