Love to Dance raising money for new floor with a bottle drive

MERRITT – A massive bottle drive is taking place this weekend as the Love to Dance studio tries to raise money for a new dance floor.

Through years of concerts and recitals, the dance floors has become worn out.

“We have noticed over the past few years every time we preform at the Christmas Concert the stage set up tends to be a little bit wobbly, from year to year it’s aging and the folks that set it up for us are amazingly professional, competent, and they do a wonderful job,” said Toni Stewart, President of Merritt Dance Society. “Right now, once we have four or five numbers happening then the stage starts to move a bit and have people running under there trying to shim it to keep the floors as level as possible.”

With an aging floor, safety becomes the top priority for all of the dancers.

“For our dancers that dance on pointe, it could be dangerous for them if they stumbled on a seam on the stage. Also for the more percussive styles, like tap and Spanish, where they have heels that could get hooked, so we are looking for something to help us negate that problem.”

The studio has their eyes on one particular solution and it could create more opportunities for the dancers.

“One of our directors did some research and she found a portable flooring mat, a professional grade, industry standard mat that you can roll across the stage that would effectively take away the safety hazards related to the seams on the stage shifting,” added Stewart. “Because it’s portable, we could also use it at outdoor venues and preform more often at other fairs, markets, and what not in town. We could take it to day care centres or senior homes and do out reach programs places where people can’t often come to the studio to get services.”

Aside from the increased access to the community, judging competitions and meeting requirements will become easier with this potential portable mat.

“We would have one large surface for all dance styles, so that would give our dancers a much larger space which means when it comes time for adjudication on exams, we could use our own studio space whether then having to go to another hall to accommodate the requirement.”

When it comes to affording the new flooring, the academy is holding a bottle drive at the Love to Dance Studio (1976 Quilchena Ave) on Saturday between 9:00 a.m.- 1:00 p.m..