Dancers and Feet (part 1)

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The dancing body is extraordinary. All of it – arms, knees, ears, neck, heart, head, the lot. This post is specifically about feet, and in fact your foot is really a sort of miracle. It deserves to be treasured and celebrated.

“Her feet beneath her petticoat, Like little mice, stole in and out, As if they feared the light: But oh! she dances such a way! No sun upon an Easter day Is half so fine a sight”.
— Sir John Suckling

In future posts we’ll discuss how they function, what goes wrong with them and what you can do about it. There’ll be technical and anatomical stuff, and if you’re not used to scientific terminology, we’ll be on hand to help with explanations, glossary and diagrams. Today’s post, however, is not scientific at all, more of an introduction.

First off, let’s consider the geometry of your foot. As dancers know, gravity pulls towards the centre of the earth in a vertical line; your foot is what lets you resist the downwards pull and stay upright. What you’re standing on resembles a long triangle, with your weight over its three corners, from under your heel, under the ball of your little toe, and under the ball or your big toe. This three-cornered shape is one of the steadiest base configurations in nature.

Your foot is relatively small, typically around 15% of your height, yet it bears all of your weight and carries you around all day, from that first just-out-of-bed shuffle all the way to pointe work, grand allegro, tap, flamenco and all the other stuff you do. This foot lets you sneak up on things or run away from them, march, trampoline, climb up stairs or jump down them, play football, skate, snowboard, climb mountains, swim, stamp, kick-box, sky-dive, moon-walk, the lot. Despite its small size and relative delicacy, it is strong, mobile and practical.

“There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip; Nay, her foot speaks”.
— William Shakespeare

There are twenty-six bones in there, meeting at thirty-three different joints, configured in three perfectly proportioned arches, and bound together and supported by scores of muscles, ligaments and tendons. Your toes can actively “point”, “flex”, “scrunch”, spread apart from the midline of the foot or squeeze together. When relaxed they can also be passively twirled clockwise and anticlockwise. Moving up to the midfoot and the ankle, your foot can also “roll in” or “roll out”, evert or invert, turn up towards the front or stretch away downwards, rotate horizontally inwards or outwards, and describe nearly a full circle in either direction. It’s extremely versatile — to misquote Marlowe, your foot is “infinite riches in a little room”.

It is highly articulate, yet stable. It can support loads of several times your body weight or propel you forward and upward. It’ll keep you on balance for pirouettes, or cushion the impact as you hit the ground, slowing your descent in milliseconds from initial bone-shattering velocity to the soft, slow-motion, feline finish of a perfect and seeming effortless demi-plié. It’s pretty, it makes wonderful lines, it protects your skeleton, brain and dental fillings hundreds of times a day, and it gets you from A to B. It’s every kind of Good Thing.

“Think of the magic of that foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It’s a miracle, and the dance is a celebration of that miracle.”— Martha Graham

How is any of this even possible? The answer is … design. The triangular base under your foot is built in three strong, flexible arches, one transverse (from side to side) and two longitudinal (from front to back). The transverse arch supports your forefoot from below, spanning the gap from base of big toe to base of little toe. The outer longitudinal arch bridges from under your little toe to your heel, and the inner longitudinal arch curves from the ball of your big toe to beneath your heel.

Graphic copyright – Jeremy Leslie-Spinks

These three supple arches, built of the joined-up bones of your mid- and rear foot, are reinforced by countless ligaments and tendons. They are so flexible so that they can absorb the countless impacts of dance, yet so elastic that they can rapidly regain their shape. The front and the back of the underneath of your foot are held firmly in relation to each other by a tough base made of fascia, which prevents them from spreading out flat under impact.

“I let my feet spend as little time on the ground as possible. From the air, fast down, and from the ground, fast up”.
— Jesse Owens

Foot shapes range from the completely flat foot (which rests the entire sole on the ground) to the normal foot (with a footprint from the heel along the outer side of the sole to the forefoot) to the very highly arched foot (which contacts the ground only at heel and forefoot). All these shapes have their own advantages and problems in terms of dance, and we’ll be reviewing the plus and minus aspects of each type as we continue this series.

One of the most important parts of this whole ensemble is your big toe, which makes it possible for you to walk, run or jump. As you step forward onto your right leg, the left foot behind you goes into a kind of demi-pointe. This is when your left big toe, flexing powerfully downwards against the ground, pushes you forward. It is able to do this because a muscle contracts in the back of your lower left leg, pulling strongly on a tendon which runs down the inner side of your ankle and under your arch, to fasten under the last joint of your big toe. The muscle shortens, the tendon pulls on your toe bones, and there you are, walking. The strong thrust of that toe against the floor is essential to normal gait. Without it, you could only hobble, which is why stubbing your toe is such a distressing and debilitating accident.

If this sounds complex, imagine what goes on during a sauté in first, or a relevé onto pointe. (Actually, girls on pointe don’t really stand on their toes, despite what people say – most of their weight ought to be distributed through the curved sole of the shoe and through the box). Toes make a huge difference to dancers – their conformation directly affects pointe work but also elevation, turns, balance and all sorts of other stuff in both male and female technique. We’ll be going into this in detail next time around.

“Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest for his feet”.
— John Selden

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Graphic copyright – Jeremy Leslie-Spinks

Try to be sensible about your feet and keep them safe. Don’t wander around barefoot, picking up splinters, thorns, broken glass, insect bites, puncture wounds, infections, parasites or any other potentially career-threatening nasties. Wear the right footgear, always. Keep your feet clean, warm and dry. Change into fresh socks or tights for class (and afterwards). Wear rubber slippers in public showers and swimming-pools, so you don’t pick up someone else’s Athlete’s Foot, plantar wart or any other contagious disease. Cut your toenails properly and often. After a bath, or when you’ve been swimming, dry them carefully – the dark, moist spaces between toes offer a perfect home for bacteria or fungal infections. A sprained ankle or stubbed toe needs appropriate medical treatment at once – don’t leave it till later. If you get a cut, a wound or a bite, get it properly seen to – infection can get in there terrifyingly fast, and may keep you off dancing for days. (I’ve been there – trust me, you won’t enjoy it).

You need these feet a lot, so be kind to them, and they’ll do their best for you, tendu after flic-flac after glissé after frappé after relevé, over and over again, for their entire long, extraordinary dancing life.

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