Ensemble’s main dance and theatre studio is a sunny 747-square-foot space fully equipped with an Alvas floating subfloor and Matlay vinyl flooring!
Keep an eye out for photos of the rest of our facilities, including our lobby, smaller studio, and student warm-up space coming soon!
“As a professional Classical Ballet Dancer, our shoes are everything! Beyond that, no matter how incredible the fit and comfort of the shoe, the floor we dance on is our world! Having grown up in San Pedro, California, and relying on Alvas for all of the dance gear, it couldn’t be more fitting that as a soloist with a world renowned ballet company, I would end up falling in love with their Floating Subfloors. A floor that has give when I land from jumps, and a surface that allows you to be daring, is a necessity. Alvas flooring provides both. Alvas has reliable products that I have always been able to count on.”
– Misty Copeland, Principal Dancer – American Ballet Theatre
Floating Subfloor
What’s A Floating Subfloor, You Ask?
“A floating sub-floor is a flooring system where at any point on the surface if you go straight down you will hit air before you hit concrete. This can be accomplished utilizing cross link, close cell foam in the form of cubes, blocks, sheets and “L” shaped forms.”
– StageStep
“The most important things in a dance floor are surface texture [provided by the marley] and shock absorbency [provided by the subfloor]… An effective dance subfloor will provide just the right amount of cushion for each step, distributing the impact evenly. If you jump on concrete, the weight goes straight up and down. On a floating subfloor, the weight moves laterally… The give makes all the difference between a soft landing and a hard landing.”
– Alvas BFM Website
Why Do You Need One?
“Dancing on a surface without a floating (sprung) subfloor is hard on the body and may hurt dancers. The chronic ‘hammering’ of the body against a hard surface takes a toll on joints, tendons and bones. Overtime, this can lead to stress fractures, or shin splints. For this reason, it is highly recommended to use a floating subfloor… In dance, a floating subfloor can mean the difference between a perfect rehearsal or one with some joint pain. When a dancer jumps, they have three times their body weight returned to them. An experienced dancer simply will not jump on concrete. Even if it doesn’t result in immediate injury, it’s going to result in fatigue and sustained stress over time.
A relatively new field of study in athletics is that of “micro-trauma.” If you look at the physiques of older athletes involved in contact sports, you may notice that the pectoral muscles don’t always meet in the middle, owing to the muscle fibers becoming detached around the sternum. This, the theory suggests, is the result of micro-trauma. Not one immediate injury, but hundreds of tiny injuries over the course of an athletic career. Sustaining repeated impact to the body will take its toll over time.”
– Alvas BFM Website
Alvas Floating Subfloor
“Alvas tried-and-true superior Floating Subfloor design allows the subfloor to “breathe” (flex as a whole floor), instead of each panel flexing individually… Even Misty Copeland [Principal Ballet Dancer, American Ballet Theatre] said: ‘As a professional Classical Ballet Dancer, our shoes are everything! Beyond that, no matter how incredible the fit and comfort of the shoe, the floor we dance on is our world! Having grown up in San Pedro, California, and relying on Alvas for all of the dance gear, it couldn’t be more fitting that as a soloist with a world renowned ballet company, I would end up falling in love with their Floating Subfloors. A floor that has give when I land from jumps, and a surface that allows you to be daring, is a necessity. Alvas flooring provides both. Alvas has reliable products that I have always been able to count on.'”
– Alvas BFM Website
Matlay
“To a dancer, we know the shoes on your feet and the floor you dance on are your world. You want a floor that’s safe and allows you to slide, but also gives you a degree of ‘controlled slip’. A marley-type dance floor surface gives just the right amount of controlled slip, allowing dancers perfect control with every slide, and is generally considered to be the very best option.
Alvas Matlay (a brand name version of marley) dance flooring is a versatile, reversible dance floor…ideal for ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, modern, hip hop and many other forms of dance… Both sides of the Matlay dance flooring have a matte finish and a surface texture that is not too fast and not too slow. “
– Alvas BFM Website