When the construction crew began repairing Putnam Hall’s water-damaged dance floor, an unexpected time capsule was unearthed.
When the construction crew began repairing Putnam Hall’s water-damaged dance floor, an unexpected time capsule was unearthed.
A single pink dance slipper.
The shoe once belonged to Beth Davis Moffett, who placed the shoe there as a graduating senior when the floor was initially installed in 1975. A professor who was also there at the time realized the garment belonged to Davis Moffett.
Now, nearly four decades later, footwear is an indication of the dancer’s personality and how his or her performance might have taken shape.
Most audience members notice a dancer’s elegant footwork and body movements, but their accessories — oftentimes meaningful for both the performer and performance — are overlooked.
“One of the fundamentals is that ballet is about lifting up out of the ground and elevation and a sense of defying gravity,” said Tresa Randall, associate professor of dance. “When you’re in ballet slippers you use your feet differently; ballet is more focused on the shape of the foot and certain ways of using legs and feel and it’s helpful for dancers to focus on that.”
With nearly every genre of dance, a different type of shoe is used, including ballet flats, jazz shoes and possibly the most well known — pointe shoe, which requires dancers to stand on their toes.
Professors at Ohio University don’t require use of the pointe shoe because courses here are intended to have a modern and contemporary feel, which the pointe shoe inherently contradicts.
That mindset was first adopted by Isadora Duncan, the “mother of modern dance,” who is credited as being one of the first modern dancers.
Duncan considered the pointe shoe to be a corset, chaining women down and forcing them to adhere to an ideal beauty standard that wasn’t realistic.
Today, most modern dancers simply go barefoot for a variety of reasons, Randall said.
“Some are aesthetic and some are historical,” she added. “Modern dance as an art form began in the early 20th century and one of the purposes of going barefoot was to rebel against the classical ballet form.”
While most dancers don’t wear shoes, some choose to wear socks as a warm up or as their own performance style.
“I prefer to start off in socks in the beginning of the class,” said Curtis Johnson, a senior studying dance. “Then once we start doing stuff standing up I take my socks off and prefer to dance barefoot.”
Johnson says he prefers to wear socks in the beginning of the routine, but once he begins dancing his feet and body tend to get warmer and then, “my feet are more prepared to dance.”
Other dance styles also tend to encourage going barefoot, such as dances from Africa. Those performances tend to include other accessories, such as colorful jewelry and clothing as well as impactful musical instruments.
“Usually in certain cultures they use a lapa, or some type of traditional pants. Usually it’s worn in any of the prints that you would find in different parts of Africa,” said Zelma Badu-Young, associate professor of dance. “Normally in ballet and modern they don’t want you to wear jewelry but I don’t mind because that’s part of the culture. You’re actually supposed to wear a lot of (jewelry); you’re supposed to adore your body.”
In most performances Zelma wears a lapa, a type of decorative clothing, that she made and designed herself.
Dancing also requires practice — which sometimes come in the form of additional tools — to learn the routine.
In ballet, a barre is used to support a dancer while he or she is practicing. It’s a traditional training method, Randall said.
“The barre is there to help give stability to the dancer so that you can really focus on the intricacies of the technique. And not only stability, but it gives you a sense of your alignment because ballet is based very much on geometric form,” Randall said.
While ballet uses the barre, dances from Africa move to their own drum.
“They don’t have a ballet barre, but they have instruments,” Badu-Young said. “In dances from Africa it’s not just the movement that you’re working on. You’re working on the music and the art, the instruments and artwork — everything encompasses the African dance; it’s not just the movement.”
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