Harlequin Cascade dance floor for RAD conference

Performances at the Royal Academy of Dance annual conference took place on a Harlequin Cascade™ dance floor, supplied by British Harlequin plc for the event at the Mermaid Conference & Events Centre in London, attended by over 500 delegates. 

Royal Academy of Dance Chief Executive Luke Rittner opened the proceedings and guest speaker Dame Monica Mason DBE, Director of The Royal Ballet, spoke about the importance of valuing teachers. "Dance teachers play a hugely important role by inspiring, energising and guiding the young people that they teach," she told delegates. 

Eighteen students from schools across the UK put words into action by taking to the Harlequin Cascade dance floor on stage to demonstrate a range of exercises from the new syllabi. Paula Hunt, Chair of the Panel of Examiners talked the students through the demonstrations, explaining the creativity and musicality underpinning the choreography and key assessment features for each exercise. 

The programme was brought to a close with a live coaching session led by Royal Ballet Principal Dancer, Steven McRae, teaching Lachlan Monaghan, graduate year student at The Royal Ballet School who appeared by kind permission of Gailene Stock AM. 

The Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) is an international dance teacher education and training organisation with approximately 13,000 members in 79 countries, promoting the knowledge, practice and understanding of dance internationally through the education and training of teachers. 

Bolshoi’s sumptious set design includes the dance floor!

Photo: Courtesy of TDM

After a six year restoration project, reported to have cost a massive £1/2 billion, Moscow’s iconic Bolshoi Theatre re-opened this autumn with a glittering gala performance attended by president Dmitry Medveded and the Russian elite. Unusually, instead of unobtrusively providing a world class floor for the dancers, the Harlequin dance floor was itself an integral part of the set design for the Bolshoi Ballet’s Sleeping Beauty. 

Thanks to innovative techniques developed by Harlequin’s development engineering team, the usually plain vinyl dance surface echoed the sumptious set design with an intricate pattern designed by the Italian Designer Ezio Frigerio. 

Using advanced wide format computer controlled printing techniques, the Bolshoi’s design was digitized for printing on rolls of specially formatted white Harlequin Cascade™ vinyl. 

Extensive testing and experimentation during the development of the technique ensured the surface characteristics - so important to professional dancers - were maintained while ensuring adequate adhesion of the inks to withstand scuffing from ballet shoes. Harlequin is pleased to announce that this capability is now offered as a custom option for purchasers of their floors. 

Harlequin Cascade™ is a reinforced vinyl dance surface manufactured to high standards. It is popular with stage managers as a heavy-duty stage floor withstanding general stage use and tolerant of heavy props and also ideal for dance. A silky smooth emboss gives deceptively good grip conveying a soft feel, giving dancers an unmatched confidence for demanding choreography. The underlying Harlequin Liberty™ sprung floor comprises a series of inter-linked panels designed to provide consistent shock absorption that independent research shows minimize stress injuries for dancers. 

Harlequin sponsorship for Prix de Lausanne

Harlequin Floors, world leaders in dance floor technology continues as a sponsor for the 40th Prix de Lausanne which takes place in Switzerland from 29th January – 4th February. Competitors in this prestigious event will once again enjoy the benefit of performing on Harlequin dance floors, supplied as part of the company’s sponsorship support. 

During the 2012 Prix de Lausanne, Harlequin will also be running a Facebook based competition, with everyone registering a “Like” being entered into a prize draw and the chance to win one of 5 iPads. Full details of how to be involved can be found online or go to our Facebook page   and click ‘Like’. 

 Created in 1973, the Prix de Lausanne is an international competition for young dancers aged 15 to 18 with “a prime objective to discover, promote, and support talent among the world’s finest young dancers.” Harlequin Floors is also celebrating four years of participating in the Prix de Lausanne as sponsor of the video-blog which has become established as a favourite of the young dance community.

Harlequin sponsored the inaugural Dance Proms

British Harlequin was a sponsor of the first ever Dance Proms when the UK’s rising stars recently performed at the Royal Albert Hall. Twenty-four dance acts from around the UK danced on a Harlequin  floor at this major new national dance festival launched earlier in the year to find the UK’s most talented dance students.

“With more than 450 young dancers taking to the stage at the Royal Albert Hall, it was an evening to remember with a finale that brought the packed Hall to their feet for a standing ovation.
The young dancers showcased a huge range of dance styles and cultural influences – from classic ballroom and beautiful ballet to energetic tap, Kathak, Spanish and thought-provoking contemporary dance  Many respected guests from the world of dance were in attendance including Dame Beryl Grey DBE, Lady Deborah MacMillan, Bonnie Langford, Baroness Hooper, Steven McRae, Karen Hardy, Mark Summers, Sir Peter Wright, Kevin O'Hare, Jack Petchey CBE, Anthony Van Laast and Chris Hollins.”


Northern Ballet continues to put trust in Harlequin dance floors

British Harlequin recently installed Harlequin WoodSpring™ sprung floors with Harlequin Studio™ vinyl dance surfaces in all the dance and performance studios for Northern Ballet’s new building in Leeds. 

Talking to British Harlequin, Andy Waddington, Head of Technical Services stressed the importance of sprung floors that benefit not just ballet dancers, but dancers of all styles and age groups that use their facility. When the architects were appointed a Harlequin sprung floor was high on the priority list. "Harlequin is something I can trust and I know it is going to work", said Andy. He explained, "Northern Ballet has a long history with Harlequin; we’ve still got working floors that we bought in 2000! Harlequin means reliability. I’ve got confidence in their products and go back to them time and time again". 

Andy continued, "With our long association with Harlequin, we couldn’t think of going anywhere else. WoodSpring just works. It’s perfect. The dancers really appreciate it; they know that they’re safe and they can bounce up and down for days and nothing’s going to go wrong. That’s piece of mind! The dancers know they’re getting a top quality floor; that it’s going to be right and that they’re not going to slip, fall over or hurt themselves. And I know the floor’s not going to fail; it delivers every time". 

The full interview with Andy Waddington can be viewed on the Harlequin video channel and on their YouTube channel. 

Harlequin is the floor Phoenix Dance Theatre keep coming back to!

"I am very happy with the Harlequin floors in the building" . said John Slater, Technical Manager of Phoenix Dance Theatre. " I’m yet to find anything else that makes the dancers happy". 

The Leeds based contemporary dance company, founded in 1981, is now sharing a purpose-built facility that includes studios equipped with Harlequin WoodSpring™ sprung floors and Harlequin Studio™ vinyl dance surfaces. Phoenix Dance Theatre effectively re-launched about three years ago with new dancers and new management, but retained the "amazing legacy for the quality of work". John continued, "We are a contemporary dance company and they dance not in ballet shoes but barefoot and in socks. It is difficult to find a floor that has the right amount of traction so they are not slipping around when they are in socks, yet allows them to move when they are barefoot and Harlequin seems to be the one they keep coming back to". 

"For touring I have used Harlequin floors in the past and I am about to buy some more...the dancers and the rehearsal director won’t allow me to buy anything else! " 

The interview with John Slater can now be viewed on the Harlequin YouTube channel or via the Harlequin video channel .

Harlequin support for Laban symposium

Thanking British Harlequin for its "generous support " Dr Emma Redding said, "over 100 delegates attended the Passion, Pathways and Potential in Dance symposium held at Trinity Laban." The symposium launched the findings of a three-year interdisciplinary research project into the development of dance talent among young people. 

The largest project of its kind involved nearly 800 young dancers training at eight government-funded Centres for Advanced Training (CATs). The interdisciplinary research measured a wide range of characteristics related to dance talent (physiology, anthropometry, psychology, injury, adherence, creativity) and explored the factors that may contribute to optimal talent development. Qualitative interview-based research also investigated how these factors relate to both creativity and commitment. 

Delegates who attended the event came from a wide range of backgrounds and included dance educators, industry professionals and leaders, academic researchers and policy makers. The research findings presented were received with great interest and feedback from delegates was extremely positive. 

Harlequin Group Marketing Manager, Mark Rasmussen said, "Harlequin was delighted to be able to provide financial support to the symposium and applauded the contribution the project has made to the dance community." 


Photo: L-R: Imogen Walker, PhD Candidate on the project, Dr Sanna Nordin-Bates Research Fellow on the project & Dr Emma Redding, Principal Investigator on the project.