subject: Dance Flooring 101: A Basic Guide [print this page] For those who are dancers, a great deal of time and energy is spent practicing and in rehearsal for dance. For dance students and instructors, their time is valuable, and because they are so focused on their craft, they sometimes do not really understand what constitutes effective and safe dance flooring. For both types of dancers, who may find they have a need for new dance flooring when they set up a studio for dance instruction or simply a practice space in the home, it helps to get a little background on what makes up usable dance flooring for these types of artistic and physical pursuits.
The most durable type of floor for dance is a wood dance floor. The smoothness of the wood dance floor is particularly important for those styles of dance that require the dancer to slide across the dance flooring at times, which can include jazz and tap dance, for example. A wooden dance floor ensures that there are no rough spots where a dancer's feet might get caught, which can cause injury to the dancer.
If you perform ballet or tap, you will want dance flooring that is sprung. What this means is that when these dancers perform jumps or percussive motions with the legs and feet, if the ballet dance floor offers no resiliency, the dancer will be pounding the limb into a hard surface. If this is done repeatedly over time, stress injuries, as well as injuries to the joints in the legs and hips can all result, and this is why a ballet or tap dance floor that offers spring is a requirement.
Because many dancers do not have construction skills, it is helpful to find a wooden dance floor that can be put together easily. Better flooring manufacturers offer a tap or ballet dance floor that has tongue and groove edges to each of the individual panels, which fit together so that the panels can be combined to create the size of ballet or tap dance floor that is required. This means also that no nails or screws need to be used to put the ballet dance floor together, so no injuries would ever result, as they could if nail or screw heads were to poke through the floor's surface.
Another benefit that comes from this style of flooring installation is that you can take the floor with you should you ever need to change locations. A quality floor does cost money, so it is good to know that if you wish, you can take up the floor and move it to another location fairly easily.
Floors can be used in homes over carpeting, or even over a cement subfloor. Because of the resilient cushion beneath the dance floor, it makes it possible to turn a variety of locations into a safe place to dance.
