Viva : Shoes that dance with you

Dancing for many people is one of the most important activities in their lives. For them it is one of life's great passions, they live to dance. Dancing is exciting, enjoyable, artistic, satisfying and a genuine interactive social and sporting activity. The whole idea is to completely forget the outside world, have fun and just DANCE.

Latin dancing can be both beautiful and sensuous but ill-fitting or inappropriate shoes can create a dancing disaster.

Viva Magazine, managed to chat with Garry Abeshouse from Dancing Shoes Australia, a very passionate man about his Australian brand of Prodance Latin shoes.

Garry's family has been selling footwear for three generations, for over 60 years. The priority of all three generations over this time has always been fitting and service. VIVA saw this first hand recently when visiting his showroom at Five Dock in Sydney.

VIVA: The obvious first question is why buy dance shoes? Do they actually improve your dancing?

GARRY: Purchasing strongly made, well fitted dance shoes can make a huge difference. Women's fashion shoes often do not have the strength, fit, stability or comfort to be suitable for dancing. So dancers may end up concentrating more on their unstable shoes and sore feet rather than on enjoying their dancing.

Uppers can stretch too much and thin straps may stretch or break. Shoe fronts may be too pointy, squeezing the toes. Open toe shoes may have too large an opening, allowing the foot to slide straight through the front. Not a good look.

Heels often break or slant to one side and are mostly too high and thin. Salsa dancers especially soon realise that heels higher than 65mm [2.5 inches] make energetic dancing for long periods of time a painful experience.

Men usually complain that their casual and/or fashion shoes are too bulky, too long and too heavy, or the sole are to rigid or does not have enough slip to spin properly.

VIVA: What's the reaction when they try on your PRODANCE dance shoes?

GARRY: The first comment the women usually make, even from those who are not used to wearing high heels, is how comfortable and stable the shoes are.
Our men's shoes are extremely light, flexible and WIDE. They can feel the difference immediately.

VIVA: How are PRODANCE dance shoes different from other brands?

GARRY: Salsa is an example of a dance style, which is very demanding on the strength, security and fit of dance footwear. To cater for this properly we give our dancers many choices. Most of our shoe components are mix and match.
Women can choose from different styles with up to 5 width fittings, up to 10 heels, 3 different ankle straps, 4 sole materials and a multitude of colours.
Similarly men may choose styles that include plain or multicoloured Brogues, 3 width fittings, 3 heels and 5 sole materials.

PRODANCE are the only dance shoes in the world using Kangaroo leather. Available in Black only, this leather is the best leather available for dance shoes. It's consistent finish, strength, softness and resistance to stretching make it ideal for dance footwear.

PRODANCE offers the option of Street Resin soles suitable for indoor and outdoor wear.
There is also a Lifetime Warrantee on heel breakage or heels coming loose [form manufacturing faults] over the lifetime of the shoes. A Guarantee unique to Prodance.

PRODANCE even caters for odd sized feet. All good reasons why most Latin and Ceroc Dance Studios in Sydney are now recommending PRODANCE dance footwear.

Dancing Shoes Australia, now has the high quality "So Danca" Jazz shoes, imported directly from Brazil.
Soon also to have their Flamenco shoe, their Jazz Sneaker and their unique T-Bar Character shoe
with built in side gussets.

Website: http://www.dancingshoes.com.au/