Popularity
Freed is the “Official Pointe Shoe” for many ballet companies around the world among them, the New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and The Royal Ballet are a few. Famous dancers such as Carla Fracci, Viviana Durante, Darcey Bussell, Alessandra Ferri, Margot Fonteyn, and Suzanne Farrell all wore Freeds. Current stars such as Leanne Benjamin and Wendy Whelan also wear Freeds.
Freeds were the premier choice for New York City Ballet's founding balletmaster (and co-founder) George Balanchine. He found Freeds to be lighter and more flexible than other brands of shoes such as Grishkos. Contrary to the assumption of the uneducated observer, it is not the stiffness of the shank or the hardness of the box that really gives the pointe shoe its strength.
Read more about this topic: Freed Of London
Famous quotes containing the word popularity:
“Here also was made the novelty ‘Chestnut Bell’ which enjoyed unusual popularity during the gay nineties when every dandy jauntily wore one of the tiny bells on the lapel of his coat, and rang it whenever a story-teller offered a ‘chestnut.’”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“A more problematic example is the parallel between the increasingly abstract and insubstantial picture of the physical universe which modern physics has given us and the popularity of abstract and non-representational forms of art and poetry. In each case the representation of reality is increasingly removed from the picture which is immediately presented to us by our senses.”
—Harvey Brooks (b. 1915)
“The popularity of disaster movies ... expresses a collective perception of a world threatened by irresistible and unforeseen forces which nevertheless are thwarted at the last moment. Their thinly veiled symbolic meaning might be translated thus: We are innocent of wrongdoing. We are attacked by unforeseeable forces come to harm us. We are, thus, innocent even of negligence. Though those forces are insuperable, chance will come to our aid and we shall emerge victorious.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)