Good Vibrations
There’s Never Been a Better Time To Do Dance Floors Right  

In one way or another, dance floors have always been at the very heart of successful nightclub operations by virtue of their special function as modern-day maypoles where patrons gather and entertain themselves with all the good vibrations of the here and now moment.
    At some point in their trek through the outsized Disco era, hip-hoping along to the downsized super-lounge phase and the more recent disappearing dance boards era to the present day, it also became part of the established wisdom of the nightlife trade that dance floor design was crucial to the dynamic flow of an establishment. Not just in the literal sense, but also in how and to what extent it facilitates beverage sales, club safety and security, and the aggregate amount of time that patrons remain on the premise. 
    The upshot of this is that modern dance floors not only have to put guests in awe of a particular club, but they have to work on a business level as well. It is a feat that is not always easy to pull off, given the usual constraints as to size and layout in the typical venue.

Buyer’s Market
    Done right, dance floors occupy that perfect hallowed ground between form and function, balancing the interests of both patron and proprietor in Zen-like fashion. Done wrong, however, and they can make a nightclub or lounge setting feel as though it’s stuck in a time warp. At its worst, bad dance floor design can kill bar sales by preventing circulation, or in the case of a dance floor with too big a footprint in a club, creating the impression that a venue is empty.
    For all the missteps that can get in the way of solid dance floor design — disasters of both the door-bolting variety as well as those that merely stymie a venue’s profit potential — club operators are getting smarter all the time about how they commit an establishment’s precious resources for dance floor design or re-design. It is no less true today than it was yesterday that some situations call for the special expertise that only an architect or a commercial design professional can address.
    Yet what has changed is that more innovation and more options as to style, composition, technology and endurance are transforming this once risky seller’s proposition and regularly recurring club redo into more of a buyer’s market favoring those owners who shop around first.

Get Smart and Think Ahead
    Key in shopping around is really putting some thought into the application for which the floor will be used, and there’s an option for every purpose.
    “We never try to put down our competition, because each type of floor is great for its application,” Ernie DiGennaro, president of California Portable Dance Floor Co. “These are the things you have to consider when buying a dance floor. We’ve done restaurants out here in California where everybody likes outside seating, so we’d put an outdoor dance floor under their awning or whatever it might be. Sometimes, they’ll leave it out there all summer. You wouldn’t want to do that with a real wood dance floor, so we use our wood grain vinyl dance floor.
    “One of the things a first-time buyer should consider is that in a lot of states, for a club to have a permanent dance floor, they need a dancing license,” DiGennaro says. “One way some people are getting around this is by using a portable dance floor, which does not become a permanent fixture of their bar.
    “Another thing that’s very important that the first-time buyer has to consider, is they have to keep in mind what they might want to do later on if (dancing) catches on and they need to add to their floor or change the configuration or do replacement parts.”
    That nightclubs can benefit from the wide array of professional, performing arts applications in dance floor design is the whole idea behind Moorestown N.J.’s American Harlequin Corp. A global firm offering dance floor solutions for entertainment icons such as Columbia Pictures and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Harlequin now offers a line of more than ten permanent and portable dance floors, both multi-purpose and discipline specific, with varying degrees of on-premise application.
    For example, its Allegro floor covering was specially developed by Harlequin
to offer superb protection against hard sub-floors, while its Harlequin Reversible is a double-sided surface for dance and stage, capable of adding a variety of color and design variance.
    “Typically, club operators almost always ask about multi-purpose floors: hard-wearing, suitable for soft or percussive dancing,” Harlequin General Manager Patricia A. Basileo says.
    “Wet looks and special effects are needed to bring in the young, trendsetter crowds,” Basileo says. “(And in terms of dance floor dimensions), I would says big is definitely back.” 

Floor Models
    Not all dance floor design dilemmas are equal.
    For instance, Creative Environments offers products to create a theme and experience in a more affordable way than completely rebuilding a club. Its Illusion Flex product applies like wallpaper on existing surfaces to give them the appearance of something else entirely. And Liquid Floor (pictured above) is comprised of two sheets of commercial, super-heavy-duty plastic that is welded on all four sides and injected with two different liquids — one a water base and one an oil base.
    Creative Environments can dye those liquids any PMS color. The liquid then swirls and moves beneath the feet of patrons and can be lit for added effect. The result is a wild environment at the fraction of the cost of having a design firm come in to tear the establishment apart and start from scratch.
    Another new, versatile dance floor on the market is California Portable Dance Floor Co.’s patent-pending Versa Floor. Sectional, interlocking dance floor panels allow for options of changing patterns, designs or colors in each section. With the Versa Floor, the company takes a durable product a step further with a new cosmetic edge. The three-layer plywood core panel has a clear, removable, abrasion-resistant acrylic top that allows a venue to personalize any
function by inserting holographic pattern sheets, pictures, company logos or other designs.
    “There’s only two ways to light a dance floor — either from below or above,” DiGennaro says. “If you light it from above, you need some type of reflective material on the dance floor. That’s why we’ve created this Plexiglas dance floor with a removable insert, so you can insert this holographic material.”              NCB