I have a problem with my new tango shoes, Tangotacion's Jenny, green fish skin, size 37. They are absolutely beautiful, but too wide at the heel and not tight enough at the front. What I mean to say is that the peep-toe is too wide for my toes to merely peep out. Instead, all four of them shout out the front of my shoe in a chorus of potentially crying toenails. I don't like having to modify the shoe with inserts and it breaks my heart (at least the tiny part reserved for attachments to footwear) that the shoes do not fit perfectly.
I was hoping to find a cobbler skilled enough to remedy this. A cosmetic surgeon for my shoes, if you will. I visited two yesterday and both said they couldn't change anything about the shoe. One woman said the shoes were just too beautiful and well-made, and that it would just be easier to add inserts to them.
I took that home with me. The shoe is already perfect in its own right; it is made of superior quality materials, and "putting it under the knife" to try to modify it would compromise its integrity (not to mention scratching up the patent leather piping and potentially adding on sub-par materials). Fortunately for the shoes both cobblers were wise enough to tell me there was nothing they could do. I'm going to have to relent and add insoles. I'm not completely happy with this (I still long for a perfect fit, but I can't exactly buy another expensive pair of shoes at the moment). In the same way, going under the knife to change some thing about someone's physical makeup could needlessly alter who that person is. Mind you, different people have different reasons for cosmetic surgery, but in my case I feel that changing anything the easy way would detract from what I am supposed to learn here on earth. I'm already crafted perfectly to whatever purpose is mine. Perhaps frustration with how clothes fit me is a cross I am meant to bear, to teach me patience or to give me just enough push to learn how to make my own clothing. As with the shoes, the easiest thing is to just add padding and dance like nobody knows.
There is much more to be said about the relationship between a dancer and her shoes. In the case above I am comparing the shoes to the dancer, but more can be said when we compare her shoes to her partners. That is a topic for a later post.
It's amazing how relevant this illustration was to me; the whole past week I had been struggling with my own issues, and realizing that cutting up the shoes would make them less beautiful was like being told, "you are perfect the way you are." This is how tango speaks to me.
