Breaking In
Dancers break in, or soften, new pointe shoes in order to improve their fit and thus eliminate the discomfort caused by new shoes. Various methods are employed for breaking in new pointe shoes including deforming them against hard surfaces, striking them with blunt objects, wetting the toe boxes and then wearing them, and heating them to soften the glues, but these methods may shorten a pointe shoe's usable lifetime.
Read more about this topic: Pointe Shoe
Famous quotes containing the word breaking:
“Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”
—Sun Tzu (6–5th century B.C.)
“Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapors that did seem to strangle him”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)