Every time I teach sissone, I start by saying, “Does anyone know what sissone means?… and if you say “scissor,” I will make you do push-ups.”

The french word “Cisuaex” (pronounced see-zoh) means “scissor.” the word Sissone doesn’t actually mean anything, it’s the name of the man who invented the step.

The step goes like this: you start with two feet on the ground, plie, jump up in the air, and land on one foot. Then you either leave the foot up in the air (overt meaning open), or you close it (ferme, meaning closed). See the video below for a demonstration.

The first thing they do is two sissone fermes, then one sissone overt, pas de bouree. Then they do sissone simple and finish with some assambles.

The important thing to remember about sissone is it’s a jump, not a leap. Remember this post about the differences between jumps and leaps? if not go back and read it again. Keep it in mind as you jump up in sissone before you land. Every student I’ve ever had who has had problems with sissone, their problem was that they were leaping (going from one foot to the other) instead of jumping.

Knowing whether or not a step is a leap or a jump helps you know where to put your energy. Do you go up in the air, or travel across the floor? Where is your focus? And how does changing that energy affect the combination/choreography?



A leap is any step that moves through the air and goes from one foot to the other. Your focus is movement across the floor.

Grand jeté: you brush one foot up into the air, and leap onto it.
Petit jeté: you’re brushing one leg and landing on it (though in coupe).
Glissade: you brush one foot, leap onto it, and then close the other one.

Jumps are a little different. They usually don’t travel (or they travel only a little) and the focus is getting up in the air.

Sissones jump up into the air and land on one foot.
sauté jumps up and lands, and doesn’t travel at all.
Temps levé jumps up and down on one foot only.
Assamblé under jumps up off of one foot and lands on two feet.

But there’s one that doesn’t fit.. Assamblé. (It's special, it gets it's own post.)

Dégagé is a very important step, because not only is it a good warm-up for the feet, and a strengthener for pointe, but it’s a preparation step for later steps in the center, like glissade, sauté and temps levé, and jetés.

The word degage means “disengaged.” The American and Italian school tend to call the step this because we’re focused on disengaging from the floor. However the French school tends to call it battement glissé, which means “glide.” They want this step to focus on the gliding graceful aspects of the step. The Russians school often calls it battement jeté, which means “thrown.” They look at the sharper components, and want the throwing out and pulling back in.

It’s important to know all these different versions so that a) if you ever go to a different class and the teacher says one of them, you know what they’re talking about, and b) good dégagés combine all three of these different components. Disengaging, throwing, and gliding. See if you can get all three of those adjectives into your dégagés!

Why is vocabulary important? I mean, if you know how to do the step, why does it matter what it’s called, what it means, and what all the variations of the word means? Just do the step, right?
Not really. Yes I can brush my foot out of fifth position and put it back in without knowing it’s called a degage, but if I don’t understand the vocabulary, I lose quality of movement.
That being said, I’m putting together a series of blog posts where I take you through all the basic ballet steps (barre and centre) and explain what they mean, and how that should affect your dancing them.
Here is the list (and I’ll hyperlink each one as they go live!)

• Plie
• Cambre
• tendu
• degage
• pas de cheval
• passe
• en cloche/ballencoire
• rond de jambe
• fondu
• developpe
• frappe
• grand battement
• adagio
• saute/temps leve
• sissone
• Jumps and Leaps
• failli
• glissade
• assamble
• jete
• pas de chat
• grand jete
• pas de bouree
• pique

That’s a lot, right? But don’t worry, it’ll be awesome! I think this will be very helpful for everyone, and I’m excited to get started on this project! There will be a combination of text, pictures, and videos.
So warm up and stretch out, and let’s get started!

Remember this article, about how to lose weight and get all your nutrition? I’ve had people ask me to give examples about what kinds of stuff to eat when you follow that diet, so here you go!

Breakfast

• ½ cup oatmeal, milk, chopped apples or dried fruit, nuts, and sprinkle of cinnamon 
• 1 biscuit of Shredded Wheat (plain flavor) 
• 1 cup Fiber 1 Cinnamon O’s 
• Cup of yogurt with fresh cut fruit only (no fruit yogurt or sugary yogurt) 
• 1 Health-nut muffin 
• 1 pancake made with peanut butter, apple sauce, and wheat germ
• ½ bottle Naked © juice 
• 1 cup of fresh fruit 
• ¼ cup granola (no sugar! Just plain granola) with milk or yogurt 
• 2 eggs and one half of a whole grain bagel

Lunch or Dinner

• 1 cup brown rice, ½ piece of grilled or baked chicken (or fish)
• 1 cup brown rice, 1 cup black beans (or other beans) on top (add tomato, pepper, onion, little bit of cheese, etc)
• Wrap with turkey (or ham), provolone cheese, hummus, spinach, and tomato
• Bagel sandwich (bagel, 2 pieces of meat, lots of lettuce, 1 piece of tomato)
• Bean and rice burrito with veggies
• Half a yam or sweet potato (just cook until soft, then slice open and eat).

Snacks

• Half an apple, tablespoon of peanut butter
• Plain rice cake, tablespoon of peanut butter
• String cheese
• ½ bottle Naked © juice
• veggies and hummus
• Cucumber, cheddar, and turkey sandwich (stack it up and use the cucumber slice as the bread)

There are a lot of different kinds of rond de jambes, and today, I’d like to take you through all of them, one at a time, in intricate detail. (I’m working on a video of all the different ones, so stay tuned!)



Rond de Jambe – circle of the leg. Most rond de jambes draw a half circle or a circle. try to visualize the half-circles in all these different kinds.

a terre (or par terre) – a rond de jambe on the ground. tendu, circle to the side, circle to the reverse, and close in first.

petit – small rond de jambe. Tendu front, circle to the side, and close. (Or reverse.)

demi (a la second a terre) – small rond de jambe (to the side). makes a circle, but stays in second. (imagine an a la seconde rond de jambe oval that you draw with your foot… but do it on the ground.)

en l’air (or a la second en l’air) – battement to the side, and circle back in to retire

grand – large rond de jambe. battement, passe, and developpe to the opposite direction, and brush back through. (Imagine a half-circle turned on its side).

grand en l’air – Large rond de jambe in the air. battement, carry to the side, carry to the other direction.

grand battement en rond (or grand rond de jambe battement). from coupe or attitude, battement out to a degage, carry to the side, and carry to the opposite side in tendu (this is a Russian step).
Photo credit: mkd. via Visual Hunt / CC BY

Protecting your feet in pointe shoes is not just about avoiding pain. Sure, pain sucks, but you know what sucks harder? Ingrown toe-nails. Stress fractures. Actual broken bones. Bleeding through your pointes. Toes growing in weird directions due to shoes that don’t fit right. Now that, my friends, sucks.



There are ways to avoid said discomforts and injuries. Enjoy the info below, and if you have anything to add, please leave a comment! I might add it to the post.

Prevention

The best way to avoid pain and injury is to be proactive in preventing it. Here are a few tips for before you put on your shoes:

• Cut your toenails a few days before class, not the night before or the morning of. The skin under the toenails is soft, and if it’s freshly exposed, it hurts a lot when you put your weight on it!
• If you forget to cut them, don’t cut them before you put your shoes on. Dancing with long-ish toenails is better than dancing with ones that are too short. Cut them as soon as you take your shoes off so you won’t forget next class.
• On that note, if you do tend to forget a lot, keep a nail file in your dance bag. That way, you can file your toe nails down a little bit every time you notice they’re a little long, and you don’t have to worry about when is the best time to cut them.
• If your toes are a little soft, soak your feet in a combo of water and rubbing alcohol, or use the rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball and rub your toes down. Do this a few times during the day, and for a few days. It’ll dry out and toughen the skin (and while you’re at it, get rid of any infections that might be starting without your knowledge), and you’ll be more likely to get a callous (good!) than a blister (bad.).

Serious callous:

It’s ugly… but it’s the body’s natural protection method. That person won’t have pain in that area of his/her foot.

Blister: soft skin with either liquid or air under it. Painful. Yuck. bad. Poke it with a sterile needle, put rubbing alcohol on it, and wrap it in a band-aid.

Tape

I use two kinds of tape: foam tape, and athletic tape. I use them for different things.Athletic tape

If you know you have a long rehearsal ahead of you, tape your toes with athletic tape or cloth tape. Tape them individually, so you still have flexibility and freedom of movement, but cover all the important areas so you can protect yourself from blisters. Don’t’ wrap too tight, or you’ll cut off circulation.

Foam tape

I love this stuff. I should buy stock in this stuff. This is great if you have that one toe that just keeps getting crushed against your box, or if you just cut your toe-nails and your toe pads just aren’t cutting it that day.

Even better, if you do somehow get a blister or a scab or a rip, wrap this stuff around the toe in question reasonably tight. It’s elastic, so it’ll reduce the circulation in that toe. It’s uncomfortable, but it keeps that toe from hurting too bad. (note: this is for short term only! take the tape off as soon as you can.)

Besides taping toes, you can do a lot with tape. I use athletic tape to keep my drawstrings in my shoes. Since it’s heat activated, I can position and re-position it until it’s right, then put the shoes on. By the end of the class or rehearsal, the glue has set, and I don’t have to worry about drawstrings popping out.
Also, if your h
eel tends to pop out of your pointes, or if the drawstring is cutting off your Achilles tendon, put a little foam tape either on your heel or on the shoe, and it takes care of the problem! (as demonstrated here in a pair of heels.)

Lambs wool

One of my teachers was die-hard old-school. She made us use lambs wool for the first year. Pillows for Pointe, one of my favorite brands, had just come out with a lambs wool toe pad, a brilliant creation if I do say so myself. However, it was still uncomfortable. I did manage to discover a few tricks on how to make it work surprisingly well.
First, tape your toes if necessary (see above).
Second, go to Walmart and find a pair of soft, comfortable, thick, squishy, but reasonably inexpensive socks, and cut the toes off.
Third, place your chunk of lambs wool over your toes, and then put the sock over the wool. It keeps the wool from sliding around too much.
This was the only way I was able to NOT bleed through my shoes my first few months en pointe… (before I started sneaking my gellows into class…)

Gellows

Ah, Gellows. I love these things. They’re made of a special gell that is designed with students in mind. They’re the right thickness, so you can feel the floor, feel your shoes,and feel your toes, but they do not hurt. Also, they’re reversible, with gell on one side and cotton lining on the other.  The gell absorbs shock so you don’t have too much pain in your joints.
I would recommend you pick up a pair immediately. They’re also one of the less expensive types of padding out there… aside from the absolute cheapest… which brings us to:

Paper towels

I know what you’re thinking… “Haley, are you serious? that’s got to hurt.” But actually, it doesn’t.

The paper towels actually absorb a lot of stress, they’re easy to mold and control, and they absorb sweat and don’t slide around like gell pads. You can only use them a few times, and once they start to shred you have to use new ones, but obviously, they’re super cheap. In fact you can probably get them for free, if there’s a public bathroom around your studio or facility.

Ouch! Too late!

Cuts/Scrapes/Burns

Ingrown toe-nail

Stress Fracture

That’s it for today, folks! If you have any tips, questions, or advice, leave it in the comments!

~Miss Haley

Oh if I had a penny for every time I got this question....

The answer is always the same: “The right ones.” I mean, what else can I say? “Go get this type, this size, this brand, they’re my favorite”? I don’t think so!



I’ve decided to write up this post because of the amazing amount of times I’ve heard this question, and maybe it’ll help some other confused parents and students out there.

Here’s how pointe shoes work: A company decides to make pointe shoes, so they develop their own shape, hardness, material bank, and signature look. Bloch shoes are a little… well… blocky. Grishko has narrow heels and wider metatarsals, and tapered toes. Capezio is round-ish. Russian Pointes are very very very hard and usually fit someone with a super narrow foot and a high arch.

That being said, there are many little variations in each shoe. For instance, here is a list of all the different components of a pointe shoe:

• Length
• Width
• heel height - how high they sit on your heel
• height on the instep: how high they come up on the side of your foot
• shank hardness - how hard they are to bend
• shank style - full, 3/4, half, demi-pointe, super soft, graduated shank, etc.
• vamp height – how high they come up over your toes
• wing – how high/low/hard/soft they are on the sides of your metatarsals
• platform – the flat part you balance on
• drawstring – some have them, some don’t, sometimes they’re elastic, sometimes they’re cotton…
• vamp cut – u-shaped, v-shaped, square-ish…

I could keep going. but I won’t.

Not only that, but each brand of pointe shoe (the company) has different styles of shoes within the company. For instance, Grishko makes an Elite, Maya, Maya II, Nova, Ulanova, Ulanova II, 2007, pro-2007, pro-flex 2007, and a few more I can’t recall off the top of my head. Bloch, Capezio, Russian Pointes, they all do the same thing. So not only do you have all the above choices, but you have the slightly different shoe shapes within each company.

This means there are hundreds of thousands of different possibilities.

And (not that I’m trying to freak you out) sometimes one shoe fits one foot, and another shoe fits another foot! Luckily there is no Right or Left until you break them in, so if you buy two pairs, you get two pairs.

Lastly (I know, right??) sometimes the padding you use changes how the shoe fits! I have to wear a paper towel in my left Maya I shoe, and a bit of lambs wool in my Gaynor Minden shoe to make them fit right. I had one girl whose shoes fit with Ouch Pouches, but not Gellows.


If you don’t, you could seriously injure your feet! Dancing en pointe is dangerous unless you do it right, and you can’t do it right with a pair of shoes that don’t fit.

Usually, for the average dancer, there are about 3-7 different kinds of pointe shoes that will fit them. They should try on as many pairs as possible, and pick the one pair that:

• fit the best (no squished toes, no sinking in, no sickling or twisting)
• make their feet look prettiest (arch, toes, vamp, etc)
• make the dancer feel most secure and confident en pointe (very important)

Below is the paper I give my students before they get fitted.

Pointe shoe fitting requirements

Student:

• Please only go to one of the following stores: Dance Max Dancewear (Marietta, GA), The Sock Basket (Asheville, NC or Greenville, SC) [**obviously if you live in a different area you’ll go to different shoe stores. Find out which stores have the best fitters. An inexperienced fitter is just as bad as a bad pair of shoes.]
• Call the store before you go! Some stores only fit by appointment, and some require you to be there by a certain time.
• Shoes should fit tight around the foot. They will be hard and uncomfortable, but they should not cause a pinching or searing pain.
• Your toes should be secure in the box, but not scrunched up against the bottom or sides of the shoe
• The outside sole should end right before the edge of your heel. Avoid getting a shoe that’s shank extends the whole length of your foot if at all possible, unless it’s the best fit.
• Cut your toenails two or three days before your fitting. If the skin is still tender, use a little bit of rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball and rub the skin to dry and toughen it. [I’m going to highlight this, it’s very important!]
• Do some warm-ups before you get fitted, or wear tennis shoes for a few hours. Don’t fit shoes with cold feet (dancing makes your feet swell, and if you get a fitting with cold feet, they may not fit when you try to dance in them)

For the fitter:

• No Gaynor Minden shoes please! [for notes about this, see my post about Gaynor's.]
• Fit the shoe for their foot now, not for their foot when it grows. It is okay if they grow out of their shoe.
• They are to use Gellows gell toe pads (Pillows for Pointe) unless their shoe fits best with a different pad. Lamb’s wool is not required.
• No super-soft shanks or super-hard shanks. [this is for beginner pointe students, so if you need a harder or softer shank, disregard this.]
• Inch-wide ribbon and single-band elastic (unless their foot requires criss-crossed)
• Bunheads pointe shoe sewing kit or another similar kit with waxed thread and heavy-duty needle
• The student is responsible for sewing their own shoes. Please do not sew their shoes for them.

I hope this helps you choose which shoes you want, and I hope you decide to go to a fitter the next time you need pointe shoes! It’s worth the drive/retail cost! not only that, a lot of stores will offer discounts on shoes if you dance with a studio, or if you buy a certain number of shoes, or something like that. Ask about discounts. Thanks, and Happy Dancing!
~Miss Haley