I am new to ballroom dance, and I want to know how to maintain my dance shoes. Can anyone give me some advice? I saw many products (e.g. brushes) on the internet about shoe care. Are those things work? Will using those make a difference?

Thanks a lot!!!

If you find that you are slipping a lot because the soles are clogged with dust/grime, you can use the wire brush to clean the sole off.

Otherwise, don't bother. It does not extend the life of the shoe, if anything it will cause it to wear out a little faster (though I have always had the uppers fail before the sole).

As a new dancer I brushed my shoes quite frequently. Now I do it very rarely, unless I am on an extremely slippery floor or have been on a very dusty, dirty one. But do what works for you.

A little trick - don't brush your shoes at the end of dancing, wait and see if you need to at the beginning and do it then. Sometimes you will encounter a very sticky floor, and that bit of dust in the soles from the last time you danced is what will give you freedom to move. Don't brush it out until you know you don't need it.

Carry the suede sole brush with you in your shoe bag. Then if you need it use it as anymouse has suggested. If your wearning heels, per se, I found that the clear plastic heel protector cups will extend the life of the actual plastic heel of the shoe be it latin or smooth. It's much easier to wear through the heel protector and put another one on than to continually buy and replace the actual plastic heel. Additionally, for me, the heel protector stops me from sliding all over the place when I'm really moving across the floor. Just a thought.

It has become relatively unusual to dance on a properly waxed floor. Instead, we dance at venues with polished or sealed floors, where people are bringing dust and dirt inside on their outdoor shoes, and it is picked up on the soles of our dance shoes. It can be brushed out again, but the brushing accelerates the wear of the suede. We can't win, becasue if we don't brush out the dirt, the dirt itself is ground into the soles, and that too, causes premature wear.

If, however, we dance on a waxed floor regularly, the soles pick up the wax, and the suede appearance is lost very quickly, and there is nothing you can do to brush it up again. I quite regularly use the blade of an old, blunt, knife to actually scrape excess wax from the soles. The soles quickly lose their suede feel, and become smooth. The problem comes if I take my "waxed" shoes to a typical "dusty" social floor: the effect is that the soles pick up a layer of grot almost instantly, and the shoes are very slippy indeed. The only answer I have found, is to keep a small cloth on the floor that is very damp/wet, and to moisten the shoes before I step onto the floor. A better solution would be to use different shoes on the different surfaces, but waxed is my preference when I have a choice: just not TOO much PLEASE!