I’ve been researching how the body moves when walking in high heels as part of the preparation for my solo show Bound Feet Blues. As I am performing the whole piece in bare feet, my aim is to give a flavour of the movements rather than walking in actual high heel shoes.

My Googling on the topic of walking in high heels took me to the Perfectly Poised website of a walking expert Martin Bell who offers a High Heels Masterclass. It looks like a brilliant service for all those women who would like to walk more elegantly in high heels – and without doing damage to their feet and physique.

I found his photos very interesting and helpful. It shows the “before traning and after training” movements of the body when walking in heels. I haven’t taken his masterclass but from the photos it looks like what he is saying is:

We tend to walk with a sideways hip movement in heels which presumably makes us more unstable and leads to misalignment of our posture. So after his masterclass,  we would be able to walk in a more aligned and stable way with the hips moving up and down rather than sideways.

For the purposes of my performance research, this has been useful in that I am trying out an up and down hip movement while walking on the spot in bare feet to give the flavour of a sexy stroll in high heels…

It’s not perfect yet and there is more practice and experimenting to go but I feel I’ve made a good start!

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