Ballet kit advice needed

[toomuchtooold]

My 6yo twins have just tried ballet for the first time and want to continue so I need to buy some kit. They wear all white - white leotard, white tights, white ballet shoes. The teacher explained to me that they need ballet shoes that don't have leather soles (leather is too sticky to allow them to turn, if I understood correctly - we're in Germany but his German was almost ropier than mine) so does that mean canvas shoes? For the tights, is there any benefit in buying more expensive tights in the hope that they last longer or would I be better buying more and cheaper?

Thanks!

For little ones I’d say probably they mean satin or maybe canvas shoes - most ballet shoes have suede soles anyway & leather shoes can be sticky.

Ask the teacher where they recommend you buy the stuff from.

I suggest satin shoes (or canvas if you can't find satin) - it would be best to go to a dancewear shop to have them fitted, as ballet shoe sizing is totally unlike normal shoe sizes.

Canvas shoes on a 6 year old would be very unusual. I would assume that the teacher meant a full sueded sole shoe.

These are the bottom of dd’s ballet shoes

They are suede

He said he can order for us so I think I'll just do that - DD1 was desperate to go dressed up like the other kids but she reckons she can handle doing it in socks one more time if she has the leotard etc

I really don't know what he was saying... so am I right in thinking the body of the shoe can be canvas, leather or satin and the sole can be leather or suede? So he probably meant satin and suede, but suede in German is Wildleder (wild leather) so I assumed when he said "no leather" he meant neither suede nor leather.

You know the really frustrating thing is that nine times out of 10 when I meet other foreigners in Germany they speak better English than they do German. Although this guy is Russian so perhaps not.

Soft ballet shoes have a suede sole. If it gets worn and slippery you can rough it up again with a wire brush.

The uppers can be made of satin, canvas or leather. The leather ones will be what he is asking you to avoid. As you can see from the picture that Soubriquet has helpfully posted, the sole is much smaller than with normal shoes, and doesn't go to the edges. So ballet shoes with leather uppers would also have leather around the outside of the sole underneath, which is what the teacher doesn't want.