'for Me It's A Major Panic When The Shoes Are Wrong. For The Dancer It's A Tragedy'

Sun Herald

Sunday August 12, 2007

Danielle Teutsch

It's a craft that has made this quietly spoken Australian an instantly recognised name in the world of ballet, Danielle Teutsch writes.

WHEN David Wilkenfeld goes to the ballet he scrutinises the dancers' movements, searching for clues on how their feet might feel as they leap and pirouette across the stage.

"I try to get inside the dancers' heads," he says, explaining the quandary of the artisan who can never fully appreciate his own work. "I can design and make them, but I can't wear them." The softly spoken Wilkenfeld, 52, makes pointe shoes for stars of the world's great ballet companies.

Anyone who was lucky enough to see the Paris Opera Ballet's stars Jose Martinez and Agnes Letestu in all their sinewy grace during the company's recent Sydney tour would have seen Wilkenfeld's handiwork on stage.

In fact, name a principal dancer and it's likely he has crafted their pointe shoes. Paloma Herrera from the American Ballet Theatre, Polina Semionova from the Staatsballett Berlin and Jonathan Stafford from the New York City Ballet all use him.

Ballerinas are as demanding of their shoes as they are of their bodies. They can be obsessive about the fit, stubbornly loyal to their shoemaker and downright superstitious about changing once they find one they like.

Wilkenfeld had to badger dancers to try his shoes when he first started making them in 1981. Now they come to him. He recently moved to London to be closer to his clientele and is responsible for inventing several new types of dance footwear.

Wilkenfeld did not fall into his career by accident. His grandfather was Jacob Bloch, a Lithuanian immigrant who founded the Bloch dance and footwear company in 1932. The family legend has it that Bloch, a ballet aficionado, met a young dancer at the Sydney Russian Club who was complaining about her pointe shoes. Bloch said he would make her a better pair.

He opened a workshop in Oxford Street, Darlinghurst, and went on to make pointe shoes for the many ballet stars who toured Australia during the 1930s, including Irina Baranova from the Russian Ballet.

Bloch has since grown to become a global company, with distribution in the US, Britain, Canada and Asia, and stores in New York and London. Wilkenfeld, who manages Bloch International jointly with his brother, says he never intended to take up the reins of the family business, leaving for the US after school to study corporate finance at Ohio State University.

But destiny had other plans. He fell into the ballet and theatre clique and couldn't help listening intently when dancers complained that their shoes fitted badly.

Then he took a break from study to work for the family business in Sydney and became "addicted". He never returned to his studies.

Wilkenfeld learnt the basic techniques of ballet shoe craftsmanship from the Bloch workshop and saw immediately they could be refined and improved. At the same time he noticed that dancers of the Australian Ballet were importing their shoes from England.

"I thought 'Oh my god, how embarrassing'," Wilkenfeld says. He was determined to make a better shoe, often staying up all night in his quest for perfection. When he was satisfied he approached Australian Ballet soloist Lucinda Sharp. Once he had one convert his reputation spread among other dancers.

He keeps dancers' vital statistics on specially designed software. Each shoe is made to fit the dancer's exact specifications using the traditional "turn shoe" method. Shoes are fitted on a mould which is then turned inside out.

The canvas mache pointe is shaped by hand and baked in an oven. Shoes are designed to gradually disintegrate during a performance so they absorb the maximum shock and protect the dancer's feet. For that reason ballerinas usually wear a new pair of shoes for each performance. Slight variations can mean the difference between comfort and agony.

"Each shoe is handmade and there are a million variables, so the person who makes them has to be as consistent as possible," Wilkenfeld says. "Ballerinas can feel a millimetre wrong there or a millimetre too much there. For me it's a major panic when the shoes are wrong. For them it's a tragedy."

Letestu, who goes through about 200 pairs a year, says ill-fitting shoes can cause injuries such as tendonitis. "I need the platform to be just right so I can balance properly in equilibres and pirouettes," she says. "I need the shoe to be hard enough for pietines, but flexible enough for jumps.

"If I don't have perfect pointe shoes that fit my foot like a glove fits my hand, I can't dance."

Wilkenfeld is happy to be part of a long tradition of artisan shoemakers that dates back to the French Revolution.

"It's thrilling to be involved with an art. It's as close as we can get [to the art itself]," he says. "The right shoes are as important to a dancer as an instrument to a musician. It's a tool for their art."

But unless he comes back as a ballerina in the next life Wilkenfeld can only imagine how his shoes feel when they are worn on stage. "It's like sitting in the passenger seat and trying to imagine what it's like to drive a car," he says. "Unless you actually do it, you'll never know."

MILESTONES

1955 Born in Sydney, grandson of Lithuanian migrant Jacob Bloch

1975-79 Studies corporate finance at Ohio State University

1981 Makes his first pair of ballet shoes for Lucinda Sharp, soloist with the Australian Ballet

1982 Invents the first split sole pleated toe dance shoe, which is exported to the US and Europe and becomes the industry standard

1986 Starts selling Bloch dance and footwear in the US

1995 Designs a split sole dance sneaker that is adopted for jazz, salsa and hip-hop dance styles

1999 First Bloch store outside Australia opens in London

2000 Granted a US patent on a modern dance shoe "foot thong"

2005 Patent pending for world's first fully split ballet shoe

© 2007 Sun Herald

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