Cambridge Tango

Leather is very good for the sole (no jokes) as you need to be able to pivot when dancing tango (as a leader or follower), and works well on wooden and stone floors.

Make sure that the leather sole supports your foot in a comfortable way and is thick enough to give your foot some cushioning. Wooden floors usually provide some spring and shock absorbancy for your feet, but good quality insoles can help.

For both following and leading shoes it is important to NOT have the sole sticking out beyond the dance shoe, otherwise Barridas are a little difficult.

For high heeled dancing shoes (typically used for following) the shoe heel needs to be situated squarely under the heel of your foot to provide good balance. The height of the heel is a personal decision, but you can try standing on the front of your foot, in bare feet, and see how high your heel is off the ground when you feel comfortable. This is probably the height of heel that will naturally suit your foot.

Dance Sneakers

More and more tango dancers are wearing dance sneakers of one type or another.

My personal favourtite are Danskin shoes made for Jazz and Jazz-Ballet.

The shoes are made by Bloch, but appear to have been discontinued. The reasons they are so good for tango are:

hard compound used of the surface of the sole so can easily pivot on dance floors

soft, thick leather uppers that support the foot, but does not restrict it

shoe looks almost normal (like a classic leather dance shoe)

shock absorbancy in the sole is just enough (no bouncing)

not too hot, a lot of dance sneakers "cook" your feet

Unfortunately these dance sneakers were discontinued by Bloch because they were not taken up by their target market, but a little shop in Nijmegen, Holland (Podium) has sold hundreds of pairs to tango dancers. I was asked about my Danskins in Buenos Aires by numerous people!!

What else is there?? Well there are a lof of different dance sneakers around and new models are being released into the market all the time. Major manufacturers are:

Capezio

Bloch

Make Your Own

The final soltion is to make your own dance shoes/sneakers by finding a comfortable pair of shoes/sneakers and getting leather stuck onto the bottom of them. The best bond (I am reliably informed by shoe makers) is with leather to rubber, so try to find a pair of shoes/sneakers that you find comfortable and that have leather soles. I have a nice pair of tennis sneakers with leather stuck on the bottom of them - for practicing in when it is likely that I will have my feet kicked and stood on because of the fun things we are trying out.

Dance shoe shops in Cambridge, the surrounding area and Berlin.