Everyone wants to do their best to take care of their Irish dance shoes, whether they’re hard shoes or soft shoes. They’re a big investment, and you want to get the most bang for your buck. Besides that, if you don’t take care of your shoes they can impact your dancer’s score or even their safety if it gets bad enough. Below we’ve made a list of some do’s and don’ts when it comes to taking care of your Irish dance shoes.
Step 1: Daily Care.
These are the steps you should take to take care of your Irish dance shoes every day they get worn. You don’t usually need to worry about dragging them out purely to perform some sort of maintenance on them, though it can be good to check them over a bit before major competitions if they haven’t been used in a while.
The first step to taking good care of your shoes is storing them correctly. Thankfully, Irish dance shoes aren’t too tricky to store, but there are still some misconceptions that can result in problems.
The most important thing to do is to let your shoes air out after using them. Throwing them into a sports bag that lets air flow is fine, but putting them in a sealed plastic bag like a Ziploc can lead to serious issues. Irish dance shoes get covered in sweat, it’s just a fact of life, and if you don’t let them air out the extended exposure to moisture will damage the leather- and provide a perfect breeding ground for bacteria.
Another issue- and perhaps the most common reason for needing to buy replacement shoes- is shoes getting lost. Dance classes and feiseanna are chaotic; dancers usually need to be getting ready almost on top of each other, they’ve got to hurry to switch shoes for their next dance, and dancers have been known to go home without their shoes, with two left shoes or even with someone else’s shoes without realizing until the next time they need to dance. Make sure you write your name on both of your shoes and make sure to always keep them together. It seems obvious, yes, but it’s worth keeping in mind because it’ll save you hundreds of dollars long-term.
On a similar note, one of the better things you can do to make your Irish dance shoes last longer is to properly lace and unlace them when putting them on or taking them off. Just yanking the shoes off or shoving your foot into them is faster, but it can cause a lot of damage to the shoe. For soft shoes, forcing your foot in can cause it not to settle quite right, which results in the shoe stretching and deforming in weird ways to fit. If you shove your foot into a pair of hard shoes without unlacing and releasing the strap, you run the risk of breaking the heel of them, causing it to fold in on itself and permanently crease. In both types of shoes, forcing your foot in puts a lot of strain on the eyelets, laces, and leather that can lead to something fraying or splitting when you least want it to.
That’s one of the major things to avoid doing, but we have some other recommendations as well. For soft shoes we recommend tightening your laces from the toe to the ankle. For hard shoes, we recommend using a shoehorn or just your thumb to lever your foot in and protect the shoe’s heel from being crushed.
Broadly speaking, you should avoid dancing on ultra-hard surfaces like concrete- not only will concrete scuff up your shoes like sandpaper, but dancing on really hard surfaces can lead to major stress injuries in a dancer’s legs. You should also avoid dancing in the rain, especially with soft shoes- too much moisture at once will ruin them. For younger dancers who find it easier to have help putting their shoes on before class, wearing oversized crocs or slides over them for the walk from the car into class is a good way to protect their shoes. This tip works well between dances for all levels at outdoor feiseanna.
Step 2: Feis Prep.
Before you go to a feis, there are several things you should do to make sure your Irish dance shoes are in top form so your Irish dancer can be in top form. We’ve put together a list in order of good, better, and best practices to get ready before the big day.
Good: At a minimum, you should check that your laces are clean and in good repair. Dirty laces can affect your score if the judges can see them and snapped laces are dangerous. The last thing anyone wants is for shoes to come flying off in the middle of a competition! You should also polish your shoes because they will get scuffed up in class and in the bag.
Better: If you have the time, you should periodically scrape or peel off the layers of tape that you have applied to your shoes. A layer or two of tape is great for helping dancers keep their footing, but having multiple layers of tape building up muffles the sound of the shoe and just starts to look sloppy eventually. If the stage is slippery, applying a single layer of gaffer’s or duct tape to the bottom of the tip and heel of the shoe can help with traction.
Another thing you should occasionally do is go over the eyelets and sides of your hard shoes with a black marker. The paint covering them can wear off over time, and you want them to be a nice, solid black. You can also use a product called edge dressing for this, but a permanent black marker works fine.
Best: Maybe once a month or at Oireachtas you should do a full check of your shoe.
For hard shoes, this means looking over the straps, tips, heels, and buckles of your hard shoes to make sure they’re solid and in good shape. If the strap on your hard shoe is coming loose or stretched to the point of breaking, you can bring it to the manufacturer or Irish Seams at a feis and we can fix it. (If you want to know our feis schedule, you can go to our Facebook page here for announcements!) If you’re not at a feis when it happens, you can order the straps and buckles from us and get your shoe repaired at most local cobblers.
If the blocks on the tips and heels of your hard shoes start getting worn, damaged, or loose but the shoes themselves are in good shape, you will need to send them back to the manufacturer for repairs. Thankfully, this runs at a much lower price than getting new hard shoes, and you won’t have to break them in again. (Check out our article on breaking shoes in here if you find yourself needing a new pair, though.) The turnaround for that sort of thing is usually about two weeks, but that can vary in busy seasons.
For a soft shoe, one of the bigger issues you can have is when the pad on the bottom starts peeling away. This usually only happens on shoes that have been in use for a long time, because you have to wear through the stitching holding it together, but it does happen. Fixing this problem involves gluing the pad back down with a flexible glue like Barge’s shoe cement, which we sell through our online store and at feiseanna, or Shoe GOO that you can purchase through Amazon or a wide variety of department stores. Just be aware that you’ll need to clamp the pad to the sole of the shoe again and let it set, ideally overnight.
If you’re in a pinch, you can also hold it on short-term with gaffer’s tape or duct tape. We don’t recommend using electric tape for that, though, and it’s only a short-term fix.
Sadly, if the main body of your shoes has splits or holes in the leather, there’s not much that can be done to fix them. Similarly, if a hard shoe flops in half when you hold it upright it’s time to replace it.
One last tip: get new insoles, your dancer’s feet will thank you. Any dress shoe insoles should work for hard shoes once you cut them to fit, but tennis shoe insoles might be a bit too wide. The insoles for soft shoes are glued in, but if they do end up coming out you can replace them with insoles for women’s high heels and a bit of Shoe GOO or shoe cement.
With that, you’re now armed and ready to take care of your Irish dance shoes and get that little bit more performance and value from them. If you’re looking for a new pair of shoes, we have an article on how you can get sized remotely here. If you’ve got a new pair of shoes and want to break them in quickly before Oireachtas, you can find an article on what to do- and not do- here. Good luck, and happy dancing!