Construction on HSPVA’s new state-of-the-art downtown campus is well underway! Situated between Houston’s Theater District and Discovery Green, this 21st-century facility houses academic classrooms and learning centers; four performance venues, including an 800-seat main theater; dance and music studios; and more.
Thanks to the HSPVA Friends capital campaign and the extraordinary lead gift from the Kinder Foundation, the new campus will be outfitted with all the technology and facilities HSPVA’s exemplary arts education requires that the HISD budget is unable to afford.
One of the features of the new campus is a sprung dance floor in both the dance and drama movement studios. A sprung floor is a vital piece of equipment for HSPVA’s rigorous dance and musical theatre curricula. Dance and Theatre students undergo hours of practice to ready themselves for their performances. This means a lot of wear and tear on their bodies unless adequate precautions are taken to minimize stress and strain. Sprung floors are designed to absorb the shock from a dancer’s movements and reduce chances of injury in their legs and feet.
When a dancer lands after a soaring leap or jump, their body can weigh three to five times its own weight. Without a specialized sprung floor, the recoil of the dancers’ movements can lead to long-term injuries such as stress fractures or joint damage and those nasty short-term shin splints. With a sprung dance floor, HSPVA dancers are free to focus on flexibility, agility, and grace without the fear of injury from an unforgiving floor.
HSPVA dancers are in class three hours a day, seven days a week, plus after school rehearsals. Their bodies cannot handle that amount of continuous practice without a shock-absorbent, industry-standard floor, which is a feature of the current Montrose campus dance studios. HSPVA dancers need the protection a state-of-the-art dance floor provides to sustain a life-long career in dance. Without the sprung dance floor provided by the HSPVA Friends capital campaign for the new building, HSPVA’s current campus in Montrose would have been more functional for the Dance Department.
The sprung dance floor is one of the many features that will make the new Kinder HSPVA one of the best facilities of its kind for Houston’s young artists. Learn more about how you can help provide HSPVA students with the new campus they need to succeed. Want to keep up with the construction progress? Check out the live webcam!
Photo by Kirby Townsend (’15)
