Dance Shoes

Let's talk dance shoes. When people who have never danced before want to learn to partner dance, one of the most important questions is "what shoes do I wear?"

First - things you need to look for in a dance shoe:

Slip vs. Grip - most shoes that you will find in your average shoe store are designed to prevent you from slipping during regular wear. In dancing, although it sounds counter-intuitive, avoiding slipping is the last thing you want. Well, OK, maybe not the last thing - you don't want to slip and actually fall or hurt yourself. But slipping is a very important part of dancing. Or, rather, sliding your foot along the dance floor. It could be an actual slide, but most likely it's a turn. You really need shoes that will not grip the floor when you turn, or else you will wrench your knee as your body tries to move one direction, but your shoes keep your feet from following. This means no rubber-soled shoes, which means no tennis shoes, sneakers, hiking boots, dress shoes with tread, or any other kind of shoe that has rubber on the bottom.

There's a video of me dancing at a party, where I'm wearing a regular pair of Converse sneakers and we're dancing on carpet. Because I'm aware of the issues, I was able to compensate in a passable fashion most of the time I turned, but you can see, at one point, he spins me 3 times in a row. By the 2nd turn, I'm obviously having problems, and by the last turn, I have stumbled and could not complete the turn. It looks as though I couldn't do the step or I got dizzy, but it was really nothing more than my shoes were sticking to the floor. The ungainly hopping was to prevent wrenching my knee.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdkwSMV3OnU

If you are not familiar with how dance injuries are sustained and how to compensate for them in most situations, you may not get away with just looking silly as you stumble through a spin - you might really injure yourself. You also need to be concerned with shoes that are too slippery, but that happens less often than shoes that are too grippy.

There are 3 types of soles that you can use for dancing: suede, leather, & hard plastic (or resin).

Personally, I'm not a fan. Oh, they're great for dancing in, but you can't wear them anywhere but on a dance floor. This means that you have to wear some other pair of shoes from your house to the venue, bring your dance shoes with you, and change when you get there. And then you're carrying around (or keeping an eye on) another pair of shoes all night. That's a big inconvenience.

Sueded soles are great and I highly recommend them for dancing in if you're going to perform or compete (in fact, my favorite pair of dance shoes have suede soles). They are definitely the gold-standard in dance shoes. But if you're a social dancer, or you're a beginner and don't know how far you plan to go with your dancing, I think they're more troublesome than helpful.

Unfortunately, they are also the best for both construction & comfort (discussed below) and are really not much more expensive than a good pair of dress shoes (you can find them for between $20 and $300, much like regular dress shoes). I say "unfortunately" because that makes them so desirable, even though I really hate buying shoes that I can't wear just anywhere. Since I know that I will be dancing again and again, I like to buy dance shoes with suede soles for their comfort & sturdiness, and then have hard leather soles put on instead at a shoe repair store.

Leather soles have a decent amount of slip vs. grip for dancing and they can be worn on any surface. Which means that you don't have to bring a separate pair of shoes to change into (although, for courtesy, I would brush off the bottoms before stepping onto a ballroom floor, to get the dirt & pebbles from the parking lot off). Some people find hard leather to be too slippery on highly polished wood floors. Some will scratch their leather soles with a fine grain sandpaper, to rough them up just a little and make them not quite so slippery. If you do this, make sure to avoid the tops of the shoes and the sides of the soles, so that the scuffing can't be seen when you are wearing them. I've never had a problem with hard leather soles on hardwood floors and, in fact, I prefer the amount of slip vs. grip from leather rather than from suede.

As an added bonus, they can be worn to dance on carpet, because they will slide just as well as they do on hard surfaces, whereas suede soles grip carpet almost as bad as rubber. When I am giving a Bollywood performance at a wedding, and the only thing they have for me to dance on is the hotel ballroom's carpet, I wear a pair of sandals that have leather soles so I can do the complicated spins without wrenching my knee - it's way better than even barefoot!

The downside to hard leather soles is that they are not as flexible as the sueded sole shoes, especially dressy street shoes. You may have a hard time getting the nice points and arches to your feet, or you may find your feet getting fatigued from shoes that are too stiff. But after a while your shoes may get broken in to the point where they're flexible enough to do the level of social dancing you want to do, or if you buy dance shoes with leather soles, they may be flexible enough (having been designed for dancing) right when you buy them. Many dance shoes actually have a split sole - a sole that is "cut" in half under the arch so that the shoe can bend and flex along with the foot.

These also have the same benefit as leather in that you can wear them on any surface and do not need to bring separate shoes just to get from the car to the dance floor. The picture is showing a pair of shoes with leather soles that have had a plastic sole added on for protection. These shoes will suffer from the same downside as the hard leather soles in that they are not very flexible. Unlike the hard leather soles, however, they are not likely to get more flexible over time.

This option is best if you don't want to invest any money in dedicated shoes because you don't anticipate dancing very much but you figure you can get some use out of a decent pair of dress shoes that can double as dance shoes when the occasion arises. Or if you have ethical concerns about animal products. Or if you plan on dancing on asphalt, carpet, or other abrasive surfaces that will ruin delicate dance shoes.

To test your shoes, stand on a hard surface like tile, wood, or linoleum, pick one foot off the floor and spin on the other (you probably will need to push off into the spin with the foot that you will be holding in the air, but I assume you already know that?). If you can do at least one full spin in place without struggling, without the shoe gripping the floor, without leaving a streak or rubber mark on the floor, without the "gymnasium squeak", and without using your other foot to basically trot in a circle, then the shoes are probably OK for partner dancing, at least at first.

DIY - Let's say you don't want to spend the money on buying new shoes right now. You don't know if you're going to stick with this dancing thing, so you don't want to buy dedicated dance shoes, and you don't want to buy dressy street shoes either. Maybe you can't find any you like, maybe you have unusually sized or shaped feet and the only brand of shoe that fits doesn't have anything that fits the criteria, maybe you don't have any money for new shoes, or maybe you're just stubborn and you want your own shoes. You can convert an existing pair of shoes to dance shoes, using one of four methods. Just be sure to keep reading to learn what other criteria you need in a dance shoe so that you can choose the appropriate pair from among your existing wardrobe.

• • The best option for converting existing shoes is to take them to a cobbler (shoe repair store). They can resole just about any shoe into any kind of sole. Just take them in and ask to have them chromed (put suede on the bottom) or to resole it with hard leather.

I, personally, prefer hard leather and my cobbler was a bit confused when I brought in my first pair to be resoled. When I explained that I wanted them for dancing, he said that he had dancers bring in shoes to be resoled with suede, so he knew about chroming, but he had never had anyone ask to replace rubber soles on boots and sneakers (the shoes I was having resoled) with leather before. But he did a beautiful job and I love my new soles on my comfortable old shoes.

He did ask why I wanted leather instead of suede, so I told him that I wanted to be able to dance on carpet and wear them outside, and I explained the problems with suede for those uses. I think I paid anywhere between $20 and $50, depending on how much surface area had to be covered (if I went for the ball of the foot on a ladies heel only, or a full sole on a flat boot) or if the shoe needed any additional repair like a worn heel.

If you are a handy sort of person and you feel confident about your abilities to cut and glue, and you're not concerned about messing up and losing a favorite pair of shoes, then this is a great, economical option. You can convert a pair of street shoes or you can repair an existing pair of dance shoes.

I have personally tried super slick option at this site and converted a pair of Converse, a pair of Keds, and a pair of dance boots that just weren't quite slippery enough for me, and it works passably well.

These are socks that look like someone cut the toes and ankles off, leaving only a tube that goes around the ball of the foot, that enable the wearer to have enough "slip" to spin and turn in sneakers and other non-dance shoes, while still giving them access to their grippy rubber-soles from the heels and the tips of their toes for the ability to stop quickly and other motions common in Zumba, hip hop, and similar dance styles.

These tubes come in a wide assortment of colors. They also just came out with a sock intended for carpet. This looks more like a full bootie / ankle sock and covers the entire bottom of the shoe so that there is no rubber sole accessible to grab onto the carpet and twist your knees and ankles.

It is very common to see dancers kicking off their non-dance shoes and dancing in socks, especially on carpet. I've tried both the smooth floor and carpet versions, and they do work as advertised. The real benefit to these is that they easily fold and compress to fit inside purses and pockets, so dancers can keep a pair on them most of the time and always have appropriate dance footwear no matter where they are or what they're wearing ... you know, for those "dance emergencies" that crop up so often!

• • One suggestion is putting Duct tape over the soles of your street shoes if you do not have shoes with the proper amount of slip vs. grip. My second favorite pair of dance shoes (leather ankle boots) once developed a hole in the sole that I patched with gaffers tape temporarily, and then promptly forgot to get them repaired (gaffers tape is the movie industry's version of Duct tape, made of cloth instead of plastic and it doesn't leave any residue behind when you remove the tape). I have been dancing in those boots for years with that tape on the sole and I haven't had any problems. In fact, it was several years later before I even remembered I had the tape on there.

Another time I heard of a dance at the last minute and couldn't find my retro '50s sneakers with the leather soles. So at the last minute, I had to go out and buy a new pair of Keds, which, of course, had rubber soles. So I tried the Duct tape method and I was pleasantly surprised. Most of the dancing was done on a carpeted ballroom floor, and I was able to spin and slide just about as if I were wearing my leather-soled dance shoes. This was very much a temporary measure.

And yet another time I found a great pair of saddle shoes on a really good sale that I just couldn't resist. But they were street shoes, not dance shoes, so they had a normal rubber sole. Emboldened by my first experiments with gaff and duct tape, I found some tan colored shiny duct tape that matched the color of the tan rubber on my saddle shoes and I applied it the same way I did before with my other shoes.

This time, however, the duct tape left a ton of gummy residue all over the shoes and slid right off while I was dancing! I ended up with gravel and dirt and all kinds of gunk gummed into the treads of the sole when I moved off the dance floor and tried to walk in the parking lot, that took me hours to clean over the course of several days.

So, using tape is a gamble. I do not want to be responsible if you try this and it doesn't work and you wrench your knee or the tape works itself loose and gets gum all over someone's nice hardwood floor. I recommend this as a last resort only, because the rubber soles can actually cause injury. If you are going to try this, at least spend the money on the good Duct tape. Make sure to completely cover the sole with tape. You can either fold the excess up the sides of the shoe or take some time with scissors to trim the tape to fit the sole. I recommend laying the strips horizontally along the sole, starting at the heel and moving towards the toe, overlapping about a quarter-inch or so.

Construction - dancing is an athletic sport, and as such, it requires certain safety gear and the proper attire. In baseball, you can just go outside in whatever you're wearing and hit a ball with a stick and run around a circle. But if you want to do it well, and you want to do it with as few injuries as possible, you will wear a batting helmet and the right gloves for the position you are playing, and shoes with cleats (if you're on dirt/grass) for better performance and for safety.

Dancing is no different. You can do any sort of dance in whatever you're wearing, but if you want to do it well and you want to avoid injury, the proper pair of shoes is one of the most important tools for accomplishing those two goals.

First, you want shoes that will stay securely on your feet. This means no flip-flop type sandals. Shoes with laces or straps are best; slip-ons can also slip off. Next, you want shoes with the proper support. This means a well-constructed arch and a comfortable "heel cup" (the part of the shoe that goes up behind your heel). You want shoes that fit you snugly but not tightly around your toes & ball of the feet, and you want a shoe with the proper heel (for both masculine and feminine fashions). The "proper" heel will be covered in more detail below, when we start talking about styles of shoes & dances. The proper heel will not only be safe to dance in, but it will position your foot in such a way as to make the proper dance posture happen almost automatically. You'd be surprised how much of proper posture goes into dancing, and how much of that posture starts with the position of your feet.

One of the reasons why dance shoes are better than street shoes is that the shank (the part of the sole that goes under the arch of your foot) is actually made of metal in dance shoes, for a much stronger arch support that is not likely to wear down or break. Yet, at the same time, dance shoes are much more flexible than street shoes, allowing you to point and arch your feet for those nice dance lines. Yes, even the masculine shoes are flexible to allow for pointing and arching the feet, which you may not be able to do well in a pair of dressy street shoes. But as a beginner, that's a stylistic move that you don't necessarily need to worry about and street shoes with proper soles & heels can work fine to start with.

Also, the heel of a ladies' dance shoe is specifically constructed for dancing (more on this below), so the heel is much less likely to break off than a street shoe heel, especially those spiky stilettos. They design dance heels with the pressures and stresses of dance movements in mind, including spinning and walking backwards. If you anticipate doing any regular amount of dancing, investing in a good pair of shoes that is constructed specifically for the kinds of hard wear that dancing puts on shoes is well worth the money - both in longevity of the shoe and in the health of your feet (and legs and back).

Comfort - dancing is all about the feet, so you want to be comfortable. OK, no, there is a lot more to dancing than the feet, but if you are wearing shoes that are not comfortable, or even if they are comfortable but you have been dancing for an extended period of time, it can FEEL like nothing else exists in the world except your feet - and the pain they are in.

It can be tempting to buy shoes that look good or have a certain style to them, especially if you're entertaining visions of taking what you learn in your new dance class and going to the next family wedding or high school reunion and showing off your new moves. But if they're not comfortable, you might as well be dancing barefoot. In fact, if they're not comfortable, you probably WILL end up dancing barefoot (especially women who, at least, have a social convention of kicking off heels halfway through a party). A good pair of shoes made specifically for dancing will also take comfort into consideration with their design.

But you may not want to spend the money on actual dance shoes if you're just starting out and don't know if this whole dance lesson thing will go anywhere. That's reasonable. So, when looking for regular shoes that meet the slip vs. grip & construction criteria, make sure you also try them on for comfort. Wear them around for an entire day before dancing in them if you can. Break them in, get them comfortable.

So now you know to look for shoes that are a little slippery and are built well, but how do you know what shoes to buy? When you're standing in a store with racks of shoes staring at you, or visiting a website with hundreds to choose from, it can seem overwhelming and you may still not know what types of shoes to get. Or maybe you don't want to buy new shoes at all and you're trying to find shoes in your closet that will work, but obviously there's no salesperson here to ask questions about what type of shoe is best for dancing in. So let's talk about style ... which shoes you want will depend on what style of dancing you're doing and how into dancing you are.

There are a lot of different style of dance shoes that look just like normal sneakers or tennis shoes, and those are a great place to start if you want to get into swing dancing. But you can't use your regular sneakers because the rubber soles will stick to the floor and prevent you from doing all the fancy spins and tricks that make swing dancing so much fun (plus, the rubber soles will ruin the dance floor). Even if you're more interested in the low-key "beach" version of swing dancing or the smooth, sultry west-coast swing dancing, you can't get those smooth moves if you're sticking to the dance floor.

So if you want to wear sneaker-like shoes, go for Jazz or swing dance sneakers. You can get them in modern athletic-style sneakers, or retro sneakers like Keds. You can also get shoes meant for hip-hop dancers, who want their shoes to look like regular sneakers but need to be able to do fancy spins and tricks.

Be careful, though, and make sure these sneakers have suede and not rubber. Some jazz and hip hop sneakers have rubber soles. They're not the same kind of rubber as street shoes, and experienced dancers know how to use them and their special "spin spots" to do their spins & slides, but there might be a learning curve. If you see a pair in a dance store & you try them on, and you test spin them and they work fine for you, then by all means, wear the shoes you like!

But in general, stick with the ones that have suede or are labeled "chrome". Alternately, you can get your own favorite pair of shoes chromed or sueded to dance in. I had an old pair of white Keds chromed and I'm planning on converting a pair of classic Converse hi-tops soon, just for swing dancing in. Remember, shoes with suede can't be worn outside, so if you get these dance shoes, they'll be dedicated dance shoes.

There are also many versions of the black and white wingtip shoe in feminine high heels as well. They are basically the same color scheme but in a ladies' high heeled pump. Make sure that these shoes have a thick dance heel and not a stiletto, and that they are made for dancing and not just looking pretty. If the heel is too thin, it could snap off or twist an ankle, and we'll talk more about that in the Ballroom shoe section. Don't just buy from a retro clothing shop; if you're going to spend the money on wingtip shoes for dancing, buy them from a dance store or swing dance specialty store. Shoes from retro clothing stores are still just regular street shoes, unless that store caters to the swing dance crowd and not just the retro or Rockabilly fashion crowd.

Sometimes you can get the feminine shoes in a T-strap instead of a strap across the bridge of the foot, and which style you get is completely a matter of preference and cost - neither has any particular advantage over the other. If you're comfortable in the heel, these are fine for swing dancing in also.

Flats really help out the posture for swing dancing, but I've done all my swing dancing in character shoes with a 2" heel, even from the very first lesson when I had no idea how to do any partner dancing so they work fine for swing dancing too.

Shoes in tan, nude, pink, peach, gold, brown, or otherwise flesh-toned colors extend the line of the leg and make the leg look longer. Pro dancers will often chose shoes in these colors for this reason. Black shoes are terrific for going with just about everything in your wardrobe, but black, colored, and sparkly shoes tend to draw the eye and the attention towards your feet.

If you're just starting out, you may not want people's attention on your feet. However, social dancers seem to like colored and sparkly shoes to match colorful and sparkly outfits. I have a pair of shoes in tan for when I want to emphasize my legs and not my footwork, black to go with any outfit, and strappy metallic silver shoes for when I want to show off.

Ballroom shoes are specifically designed for dancing in, and the feminine shoes are designed for walking backwards in because the follow role does so many backwards steps, and follows have traditionally been women. They will almost always come in suede/chrome soles and will often be close toed or mostly closed shoes with peekaboo toe holes. You can get them in a strappy sandal, but the less coverage (and fewer straps) that the shoe has, the more difficult it is to control while dancing, so I recommend a close-toed pump for beginners.

These shoes have a gently angled arch (or shank) that allows you to roll your foot smoothly for the smooth dance steps, and a heel cup (the part that rises up behind the heel) designed to support the ankle and stay attached to your foot.

If you are planning on doing social dancing where you will be wearing high heels, then I do recommend learning and practicing in heels. Learning in flats or bare feet will be a very different feel than dancing in heels, and you may be off-balance when you first try to dance in heels. You do not want to discover how different the balance is at your company holiday party and wind up flat on your bum or with a twisted ankle in front of the boss! However, that being said...

You do not need tall heels for dancing! This is not a New York City runway and we are not Carrie Bradshaw. Don't go for the big-girl heels when you are planning to dance, even if you are used to wearing tall heels normally. Heels do flex the calf muscles and make the leg look sexy, but there is a cap to that - your calf is either flexed or not, and after a certain point it does not get more flexed (and therefore more sexy) the higher your heels get. In dancing, what makes the leg look sexy is extended lines and proper foot placement, none of which requires heels and which you will actually have trouble achieving with really tall heels. Proper foot placement has the additional benefit of avoiding the tottering or bent-knee-clomping stride that many people actually end up with when they wear heels and is definitely not sexy.

New dancers should be looking for heels that are 1", 1.5" or 2" and no higher. Pro dancers usually wear 2.5" or 3" heels at most, except for very specific costumes (or large shoe sizes). And do not wear platforms. Not only do really tall heels tend to give people ungainly and awkward strides, but being tall is not a benefit in partner dancing (unless your dance partner is also exceptionally tall).

People in the follow role (traditionally, that's women), especially, do not want to be too tall from your shoes because you run the risk of bumping your head more often during underarm turns. And while we're on the subject of heels, new dancers will want to wear shoes with chunky, thick, or flared heels, not thin, pointy, or stiletto heels. The thinner the heel is, the more danger you are in of twisting or breaking an ankle. Wider heels give much better support and stability while dancing, and when you're spinning and kicking and, sometimes even leaping about, you want as much support and stability as you can get.

Ballroom shoes will almost always come with the appropriately tall and thick or flared heel, but if you are looking among street shoes, get shoes with heels of the right height for your skill level and thick or flared heels for support. Some Ballroom shoes do come with, what they call, "slim" heels that are basically indistinguishable from street shoe stilettos, and I recommend avoiding those for the beginner dancer.

Some men's eyes may have glazed over at this point, talking about heels, but in dancing, masculine shoes have heels too. If you look at the heel graphic, you will see heels #9 and #12 are specifically for masculine shoes. Most masculine modern dress shoes have a little bit of a heel, maybe half an inch, maybe a quarter of an inch, but it's there. It's the entire width of the heel of the shoe, unlike feminine heels that narrow significantly even when they're low. But it's still a heel. In dance, masculine ballroom shoes have that same kind of heel, but it may be a tad taller than you're used to. The heel is important for foot placement when you are doing a Standard or Smooth dance.

The right shoes will encourage you to put your foot down in the right direction or in the right order, and they will also encourage the proper posture for that style of dance. In Ballroom dances, you often have travelling steps that have you walking or striding around the dance floor, and many steps require what's called a heel-lead. That means that, when you take a step, you put your heel down first and your toe last, very much like how people generally walk. But bare feet, a shoe with too thin of a sole or to low of a heel, or a shoe with too high of a heel will tend to make people put their toe down first and their heel last. That would be the wrong move for a Ballroom dance, and it will throw the entire rest of your body off. But for at Latin dance ... it might be the proper step.

Looking back up at the heel graphic, you will see that #9, the masculine Latin heel, is taller and narrower than #12 the modern heel (roughly 1.5" - 2" heel, as opposed to the 1" - 1.5" in the modern heel). This is very important for getting the person wearing masculine shoes to roll their hips appropriately (and still look masculine). But the heel is the main difference between masculine Ballroom shoes and masculine Latin shoes. Otherwise, they tend to look like just your basic leather Oxford shoe.

In general, there is not all that much difference between Ballroom & Latin shoes. Every resource on the internet gives different, and often conflicting descriptions for how and why they're different.

The main difference is that, in masculine shoes, the heels are taller & just a bit narrower for Latin shoes, and in feminine shoes, the heel is further back on a Latin shoe than a Ballroom shoe. In order to accommodate walking backwards in the Ballroom dances (which have more travelling steps than Latin dances), the heel is angled or placed more centered under the heel than a Latin heel is.

Another difference is that feminine Latin shoes have a more sharply angled shank (arch) that makes you lean forward more and puts you on the balls of your feet. That is important because Latin dances have many more steps that are toe-leads, or steps where you put your toe down first and your heel last. Latin shoes may also be more flexible than some Ballroom shoes or may come with a split sole, in order to get a good point to the foot. But all of these differences are so slight that most amateur or beginner dancers will not even be able to see or feel the difference. They might make all the difference in the world to a competition dancer or performer, but the beginner dancer will probably need to be more concerned with comfort, material of the sole, and height of the heel than anything else. Once those are taken into account, just wear shoes based on aesthetic preference for now.

The opposite of Ballroom shoes, feminine Latin shoes are more likely to be found as strappy sandal-like shoes but you can occasionally find close-toed Latin shoes too. However, the same thing about control and safety applies to Latin as it does to Ballroom - namely that the fewer straps the shoe has, the more difficult it is to control while dancing. Also, the same advice for the heel from Ballroom shoes applies to Latin shoes - don't go for the high heels. 1" - 2" heels is plenty high enough for the beginner dancer and advanced dancers tend to prefer 2.5"-3" heels and not really any higher. For masculine shoes, because of the heel, these shoes are not very practical for wearing any other time except while Latin dancing, so I wouldn't recommend buying a pair unless you are really getting into Latin dancing and plan to do a lot of it.

I do not recommend dancing in regular socks because there is not enough of the grip to keep you from sliding when you shouldn't be, but I can recommend something that goes by several names: ball of foot protectors, lyrical sandals, dance paws, or Toekinis. These are little sock-like covers for your foot that have cut outs for your toes and basically leave your foot almost bare except for a patch of suede right on the bottoms at the ball of your foot. These will give you the slip-n-grip advantage of chromed shoes by allowing you to slide and spin instead of having your skin stick to the floor, but also keeping your feet from sliding out from under you if your feet get a little sweaty.

I wear these for Bollywood dancing pretty much any time I'm not dancing on carpet (since the Bollywood aesthetic favors the barefoot look). Dance paws and lyrical sandals can be found at most dance stores and come in varying levels of quality and designs. You can get nearly invisible to obvious, like the hot pink lacy ones I saw the other day. Naturally, these will also be more expensive. Generic ball-of-foot protectors or the Toekini brand can be found at any major US drugstore in the foot care section, including Walgreens, CVS, and even Walmart, in both nude & black. These go for about $10 and you can pick up a pair on your way to the dance class that you forgot you needed to buy shoes for.

So, to sum up: when doing partner dancing, the most important thing is to have shoes that are comfortable, will stay on your feet, and have a sole that does not grip the floor but also doesn't make you slip as if you were walking on ice. If you are buying or wearing regular street shoes, most dress shoes will be fine as long as they have a hard leather or hard plastic (resin) sole and a sturdy heel.

If you want to get dance shoes, the type of shoe depends on the type of dancing you plan to do and how much of an investment you are willing to make. Character shoes are the best all-purpose shoe and usually the most affordable. Dance sneakers are probably the most comfortable and best for swing dancing, but they cannot be worn off the dance floor. Ballroom and Latin shoes have all the necessary elements for support, durability, comfort, and encouraging proper foot placement, which will then encourage proper posture, but they can be expensive and are dedicated shoes that cannot be worn off the dance floor. Your favorite pair of street shoes can be turned into dance shoes if you are willing to get them resoled by a shoe repair store and then may not be able to be worn off the dance floor if you get them chromed/sueded unless you get leather soles.

When in doubt, ask your instructor or ballroom dance party host what shoes they recommend for their events.