As athletes, dancers and performers around the world have learned to innovate and adapt beyond belief since the beginning of the pandemic, many have been faced with a series of practical challenges. From lack of space, to unsuitable flooring, missing equipment to impractical dance shoes – quarantines and lockdowns have exposed the inequalities that dancers are faced with and has massively impacted their ability to maintain a good standard of practice.
Enter Fuego Shoes. Founded in 2019, Fuego Shoes is a new category of dance footwear that is not only focused on creating the best dance footwear product, but is on a mission to create a global lifestyle brand and community of people who are passionate about dance - either at home, in-studio, on stage or just about anywhere else.
Founder Kevin Weschler started his own dance journey after stumbling upon a GroupOn deal for classes at a local dance studio, and the rest is history. He says: "Whether I was dancing at the studio, on the street, or at home, all I wanted was a lightweight, minimalist dance sneaker that allowed me to dance on any surface. A shoe that would fuse dance with street wear." He adds, "Since it didn't exist, I decided to create it."
No matter what style of dance someone specializes in, most require the same thing: the ability to move fluidly through a variety of turns, pivots and spins. Normal street shoes can bring a lot of problems, including being too heavy, uncomfortable, and having too much traction for dancing which places excessive force on the knees and leads to injuries over time.
In a similar way, traditional dance shoes are inconvenient since they can't be worn indoors, styles can be outdated, and women in particular are forced to practice in performance high heels which can also lead to long term problems.
In street and hip-hop dancing in particular, most dancers would wear everyday street shoes, but usually for fashion reasons more than anything else. However, these present the same problems and cause knees injuries. When spinning and turning using normal sneakers, the feet will rotate at a slower rate than the body. The knee is usually the weakest link and will take all the brunt of the twisting out of shape.
Fuedo Sneakers removes this problem but allows dancers to spin and groove on just about any surface without the risk of knee injuries caused by the traction of regular sneakers. Like any sport, dance requires the right equipment, training and mechanics, and the right shoe should be no exceptions.
Fuego Shoe's has an outer sole that is engineered and built for spin ability, composed of a specialized material and density to provide the perfect balance between slip and grip. Inverted pivot points also facilitate seamless turning by reducing the number of contact points in areas of increased pressure distribution – it's a truly scientific constriction.
Practice at home no longer has to compromise your physical health and dance ability – but instead we can all be on somewhat of a level playing field again. Weschler says "As dancers, there's nothing we're more passionate about. Not only do we dance in class, we dance through life. With Fuego, you can dance whenever and wherever."
