"I can actually solve a problem with my pointe shoe by the way I customize the putty."
PerfectFit helped Megan adapt her shoe in the specific ways she needed.
“One of the biggest problems that I had with my pointe shoes was the tip was sickling. I would have choreographers or ballet masters come backstage and say, you know, your
feet are just sickling a little bit. And I knew my foot wasn’t sickling, but I have a tailor's bunion on the outside of my pinky toe, which basically sends every pointe shoe off into a sickle at the end.”
“When I first tried PerfectFit three years ago, I remember being a little bit skeptical. It takes you a little while to figure out how these inserts can help you because you're not used to having a customized
toe pad. I had tried lambswool toe pads, ouch pouches, and then wore paper towels for most of my professional career."
“I had never really thought about it before… what are the problems that I'm having with my shoes, and how could I address them with this putty? How can I get my balance to be a certain way in the shoe? How can I keep my shoe from breaking in a certain way? How can I keep my shoe from twisting in a certain way? It became a very strategic thing about how I could customize this insert to help my dancing."
“For me, I’ve found I like a lot of putty underneath my toes because then as soon as I move my toes in the shoe, the shoe starts to point. It gives me more control over my shoe. I also use it to fill that negative space where my toes go in a diagonal so that my shoes don’t twist, and I always have full contact with the floor. For something like 32 fouettés in Swan Lake, or when you're trying to balance in Sleeping Beauty in the Rose Adagio, you're just more stable because you have all of that contact where you didn't have it before."
“You have to play around, you have to experiment. What if I put it here, how does that make my shoe feel? There's a solution for everybody and there's a way that I think it can help every foot.”
- Megan Fairchild
@mfairchild17
Principal Dancer at New York City Ballet