Re: old Phys Today - Ken Laws' physics of dance

["Daniel L. MacIsaac" <Dan.MacIsaac@nau.edu>]

There is a jazz/dance club in Vancouver, BC which has a spring-loaded floor
covered with Parquetry (wood tiles fitted together).  It's a few
blocks from the Orpheum theatre (can't recall the name).  The floor is
quite old, and when the crowd gets going in synch with the beat you are 
actually flung into the air.  It can be quite challenging to stand on,
and you often see people literally bounced right off it if their balance
has been impaired by their libations.  I have never seen professionals
dance on it, and had the pleasure of having a large lady land on my
outstretched leg once on it.

It's pretty unique in my experience.

Dan M

PS -- Ken Laws sometimes gives colloquia if invited.  Part of his expenses
are used to hire a dancer.  He is at http://physics.dickinson.edu

PPS -- An online dance resource is 
http://www.physics.purdue.edu/~jswhite/dance_links.html  under
Miscellaneous links is a set of dance & technology related items.
> And, if you ever have the opportunity to go and hear Ken talk about this,
> do so.  I went to see him talk about dance when he was in Ottawa a few
> years ago and he was great - and had a dancer illustrating all of his
> points as he discussed them.  Everyone groaned when they saw her limber
> up, raising a stright leg in front of her body and practically pressing
> her knee to her nose.
>
> One thing that I asked Ken about, at the time, but about which he had no
> idea was this:  Some running tracks are tuned through their composition
> and support structures (indoor ones, anyway) so that they absorb and
> release a runner's energy at a rate that matches their running cadence;
> these tracks have been shown to be statistically "faster" than others
> (there was an article in either Scientific American or Physics Today on
> this a few years back).  The question is, are there any stages whose
> structures are tuned, etc. to assist dancers in a similar way?  Anyone?
>
> Allen Brown