The perfect pointe shoes at Baton Rouge’s Toptoe Dancewear | Entertainment/Life

When young 13-year-old ballerina Merci Higdon walked through the doors of Toptoe Dancewear in Baton Rouge, she was greeted by classical music, chandeliers and a professional ballet performance on TV. Higdon, who played Clara in “The Nutcracker — A Tale From The Bayou,” was there for a shoe fitting.

Owner Londyn Atkinson Davis, who took over the store in 2024, welcomed her in by name.

From pointe shoe fittings to shopping for dance clothes, Toptoe Dancewear has been a dance retail institution in Baton Rouge since 1985, when Shirley Brock opened it. 

“It’s such a blessing. It’s so fun. And you’re still a part of dance,” said Davis, who was a Golden Girl at LSU, of running the store. “But everybody’s happy. They all come in here for the same thing. They want to get dressed up. They want to get their new shoes. This is the fun part.”

Toptoe specializes in dance shoe fittings, especially pointe toe shoes, because each shoe fits each dancer’s feet differently.

Davis and her employees keep detailed binders of notes on customers’ preferences, sizes and unique needs. Parrino-Passman, the manager and pointe shoe guru, knows what each teacher at every school and studio in Baton Rouge prefers for their dancers, and she uses that wealth of knowledge in each fitting.

After retreating to the back — to the seemingly endless supply of pointe, ballet, jazz and tap shoes — Parrino-Passman returned with two options for Higdon to try on.

“We want your metatarsals to be protected,” Parrino-Passman said as she presented Higdon with a new pointe shoe in a Russian style. “I have to make sure that you can articulate the shoe. Let’s go to the barre, to that parallel first position.” 

Higdon tested out the new shoe by following Parrino-Passman’s commands: Push up one point. Turn out. Pull the fifth position. Step out to a second position and plié. 

“It’s not that we do any kind of alterations, but every shoe is different. Like this shoe, one shoe goes two sizes up, the next shoe goes two sizes down. It’s all crazy. Especially with pointe, it depends on how the foot is structured. What foot’s gonna work with that shoe?,” Davis said, gesturing to all of the shoe boxes in front of her.

From customer to owner

After graduating from LSU in 2023, Davis bought the store from past owner Denise Dobson. She has brought new energy and new customer service to the store, expanding the dance store’s reach around the country.

Through setting up e-commerce on the website, transitioning to a point of sale system, launching a social media presence, custom designing costumes and bringing her Gen Z fervor coupled with an old-school work ethic, Davis has increased the business and brand.

“She has totally revolutionized the store,” said Vanessa Higdon, Merci’s mother, who has been a faithful customer for over a decade. “She’s made it so much easier for us to order, which has been wonderful. She set up the whole computer system, which everything used to be handwritten.”

By the time she was in high school, Davis was a Silver Stepper at Parkview Baptist, and in college, she was part of LSU’s Golden Girls for four years. Competition, coaching and choreography were mainstays in her life.

Toptoe became another home for her during those 10 years of dance. As she was nearing graduation, she was nervous about what to do next. 

“I still never thought this was ever an option. It never crossed my mind,” Davis said.

Three weeks later, she called Toptoe, and they let her know that the store was being sold. Dobson encouraged Davis to work at the store for a while to see if she was interested in buying it. If she didn’t, the store was likely to close.

“I started working and fell in love, and it happened really quick,” Davis said. 

‘They grow up here’

Training for employees at Toptoe includes memorizing the different retail brands and shoe size variations. 

Meia Starns, a former Parkview Baptist Silver Stepper who works at Toptoe, reflects on being a part of pointe fittings from the other side of the shoe. Parrino-Passman fitted Starns for her first pair of pointe shoes when she was in middle school.

“I remember sitting in the same exact spot like it was yesterday and doing the same stuff that I ask girls to do now whenever I’m fitting them. It’s a full-circle thing, because I got to experience it, and now I get to give that experience to someone else,” Starns said.

When a ballet class from a local studio moves up to pointe, or dancers from a studio graduate to pointe shoes, Toptoe opens exclusively for those dancers and celebrates their first pair with pictures. Experiences like this make it memorable for Toptoe’s customers. 

“This store is a combination of quality and knowledge, and it’s been a mainstay for my family. They truly know what families need,” Vanessa Higdon said.

Allye Covington, another Toptoe employee, has been a customer since she was in high school in Shreveport. She and her family would drive four hours specifically for Toptoe shoe fittings. Parrino-Passman invited Covington to work at the store because of her knowledge.

“I told her we’d love for her to be one of our fitters, because she understands it from a practical standpoint. The little ballerinas we all adore, but pointe shoes are such a niche that you got to get that right. If you don’t, it’s just detrimental to the dancers and their ankles,” Parrino-Passman said.

Today, Davis is comfortable with her career. There’s something to being in the world of dance retail that fits her, she said. She wants Toptoe to be the place where dancers feel comfortable, too. 

“We really try to make this neutral ground,” she said. “We don’t have favorites. A lot of these dancers grow up in this store. It’s their place. They may switch studios. They may switch schools, but they grow up here.”