| As we leave the workrooms, great tubs of gooey pale-brown glue being mixed for tomorrow are churning in a corner. The floor is covered with leather shavings and little pieces of peach satin. What other factory has such dainty droppings? |
| Bernard Kohler and I get coffee from a machine and return to his office, which is decorated only with bags of unused old toes shoes – his museum. He sits before a desk covered with papers: orders, measurements, complaints. A single new shoe lies to his right. He opens a tin of tobacco, rolls a cigarette and seems pleased by my enthusiasm for what I have just seen in the factory. After all, at the very base of the ballet business is the toe shoe – and its maker. |
| It takes three years of training before a maker can expect to get his own dancers and a steady flow of orders. He may then work for 30 or more years – far longer than most ballerinas. I asked Kohler if he and the makers know or care that we deliberately mutilate our new shoes. He laughed. “Yes, we know what you girls do…” He held his hands out helplessly and said, “This is our business. We make the shoes and you wear them.” Do the makers know much about the ballet or |
|
|
| who their dancers are? “Not really,” he replied. “These men are more interested in Saturday-afternoon soccer.” |
| My maker until two years ago was Mr. Y. We Y dancers were told that he was no longer working (we thought he had died, but he’d semi-retired) and so we had to choose a new maker. Mine now signs his work with the playing-card symbol for the ace of spades. Kohler then got up and from a shelf pulled down a dusty brown box. “Here’s something you might appreciate.” He took out an old unused pair of toe shoes. There were tiny – size four. The name on the shank was Fonteyn. “These are from her last order,” he said. He told me that in her career of more
than 40 years she had had three makers just
as she had had three partners. The shoe still shone, and the blocks were as hard as the day they were made, only now little bugs had crept inside to feed on the dry glue. He shook out the bugs and put the shoes back in their box. |
| As we left the office, Kohler asked if I would like to talk to my maker. My heart jumped and I followed him. “Mr. Spade” was Ron Boorman, 25, slim, strong and handsome. He was also very shy. It was after 4 o’clock and he was finishing up |
|
|
