Students at Impulse Dance Academy in Greenwood, Indiana, discovered a major surprise when they returned from their holiday break: The studio’s 21-year-old flooring was gone, replaced with a new Duètte vinyl floor from Rosco.
“They were ecstatic,” Kerri Sullivan, Impulse’s owner, says of the dancers. “It’s been a game changer.”
Impulse Dance Academy received the Rosco dance floor from the company through a giveaway exclusively offered to Dance Teacher readers. After years of putting off what can seem like a daunting upgrade, the company’s gift helped transform Sullivan’s studio for many years to come.
A Dance Studio Desperate for a New Floor
Sullivan inherited her studio’s old floor from the previous owner, and then reassembled it when she moved locations several years ago. “Its pieces didn’t even match up anymore,” Sullivan’s daughter and fellow teacher, Kaiti, says. “We were just making do because it was basically a patchwork of really wrinkled, mismatched flooring.”
In the end, Impulse Dance Academy received five rolls of flooring at 41-feet lengths to fill the studio space. “This was a godsend,” Sullivan says.
Duètte Dance Floor Installs Quickly and Easily
Duètte is a reversible dance floor that sandwiches a woven glass fiber interlayer between two outer layers of vinyl. This makes the product dimensionally stable, meaning when studio owners unroll the shipment, it lies flat instantly, avoiding the annoying rippling and wrinkling that may come with other dance floors.
“It didn’t have any curl at all,” Sullivan says. “We were able to unroll it and put it right down. You could easily put this down in a day or less,” she says of the studio’s self-installation.
The glass fiber also makes Duètte resistant to temperature shifts, which is helpful to studio owners like Sullivan, whose buildings withstand all four seasons, as well as to touring productions or competitions—even if the rolled-up flooring sits in a truck that is hot or cold, it will still lie flat every time it’s unrolled.
In fact, the floor was delivered during a snowstorm, but Sullivan had no issues.
“We’re a family-owned studio, everybody there was just a volunteer, so we weren’t sure what to expect. But I think it took less than 10 minutes for us to get it in the door,” Kaiti says. “It was way smoother than we thought it was going to be.”
A Dance Floor With Fewer Seams
Duètte’s panels are 15 inches wider than most dance flooring, which means that studio owners require fewer sections to cover their space. The result? Less money, and fewer seams to tape over. “That was wonderful,” Sullivan says.
Rosco customers can submit their studio or stage measurements when filling out an order, and the company will send enough panels to match the specific space. “Rosco was amazing to work with,” Sullivan says. “I sent them the measurements and they got back to me very quickly.”
Duètte is also reversible, and available in black/grey or black/white. Its nonskid surface is multipurpose, and Sullivan will use her new floor for all of the studio’s ballet, jazz, lyrical, contemporary, and hip-hop classes.
Rosco offers a wide array of dance flooring, including options for tap, ballroom, drill team, flamenco, Irish, modern, and pointe. Interested studio owners can contact the company’s customer service team for personalized recommendations.
The Perfect Surprise
Sullivan timed the Rosco delivery during her studio’s holiday break, and the easy installation left her with extra time to clean and repaint the walls before her students returned.
“It just looked like a whole brand-new studio when the floor was down,” Kaiti says. “The kids were so surprised. The old marley was so chopped up, it made everything seem smaller. When they got in there with the new floor, they were like, ‘Is this a bigger room?’ ”
The results from start to finish have exceeded Sullivan’s expectations. “It just feels so good,” she says. Her daughter agrees: “The best, most exciting part is seeing the kids’ reaction and seeing them dance on the new floors.”
Ready to upgrade your studio? Visit Rosco’s website to browse their offerings or request a flooring quote today.
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