Saumirah McWoodson The Happy Dance

All Sprung Dance Boards Coming January 2022!

At Dance Daze Dance Boards, we pride ourselves on being a company that celebrates color, diversity, and doing good for the world. One of the ways in which we try to embody our motto of #DanceWellDoGood is by using sustainable materials in our products that will both support your dancing and also improve or do no harm to the earth.

Since January of 2021, we have only used FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) Certified wood for each dance board that we cut, paint, and ship to our customers. Headquartered in Bonn, Germany, The Forest Stewardship Council is an international non-profit organization that promotes responsible management of forests all over the world. In using FSC Certified wood, Dance Daze Dance Boards is supporting the protection of indigenous lands, ensuring that the wood we use is harvested from sustainably-managed forests, and only using harvesting lumber with trees will be replaced or allowed to regenerate naturally.

We are happy to announce that in January of 2022, Dance Daze Dance Boards will continue to create more sustainable products and products that support your dance training by making all of our boards with sprung floors!

A sprung floor is considered the best kind of platform for both dancing and athletic training, as sprung floors help to enhance performance and reduce injuries. Sprung floors are created with a foam or rubber bottom or backing, which absorbs shock and provides a bit of movement (or “give”) in the performance surface. While un-sprung floors can put more stress on the joints and muscles when dancing, sprung floors help to return energy to the feet, joints, and muscles, when dancing or jumping, helping to reduce fatigue and therefore to reduce the chances of injury.

In addition to the above, the foam bottom that we use for Dance Daze Dance Boards provides a slight bounce, reduces fatigue, and provides traction for using your dance board indoors our outdoors.

While our skid-resistant dance boards are great, we want to provide the highest quality products possible to support your dance training, and we believe that sprung floors do this!

Over time, we hope to replace the current foam that we are using with FSC Certified natural rubber, which will further support the protection of forest ecosystems, including the plants and animals that inhabit them, and ensure safe and fair working conditions for the people who harvest the rubber.

Saumirah McWoodson The Happy Dance

What We Realized Many People Didn’t Know About Dance Daze Dance Boards

Our Co-founder Jeff just got back from a few days of camping. Our other Co-founder, Saumirah, could spend an entire day laying out at the beach with good friends, good music, and good food. And, as you likely know if you’re reading this blog, Saumirah absolutely loves dancing outside. I could go on and share about how Jeff was a Boy Scout as a kid or how Saumirah has volunteered with several nonprofit organizations that regularly pick up trash, but the point is this: The founders of Dance Daze Dance Boards love the earth. We want to heal the earth, protect it, and enjoy it.

So it only makes sense that we’d be really sensible when it comes to only using wood that is ethically sourced for building our dance boards, right? As a company, we made a decision to actively do this a few months ago, and we’re super happy about it.

So, let us tell you a little bit more about the kind of wood we use to create Dance Daze Dance Boards. Because, we realized, most people don’t know that this is something we’ve thought about. And, as it is, we’ve actually thought about it tons!

The wood we use for every single one of our Dance Daze Dance Boards that has been mailed out side January of 2021 is Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certified. The mission of the Forest Stewardship Council is to manage the world’s forests in a way that is socially beneficial and environmentally sound.

Some of the FSC’s principles include honoring the rights of indigenous people and respecting their land, conserving biological diversity, and maintaining or enhancing the longterm well-being of forests workers and forest communities.

Wood that is FSC Certified is considered the “gold standard” of wood. All FSC Certified wood is harvested from forests that are responsibly managed and socially beneficial.

So, when we at Dance Daze Dance Boards are choosing to only use wood that is FSC Certified, we are joining with companies who care about supporting native cultures, protecting fragile ecosystems, and preventing illegal logging.

While no company is perfect, all pieces of lumber that carry the FSC logo have met the high standards of the FSC certification program, which includes ensuring that the wood has been harvested from a sustainably managed forest.

We love the earth, and, as much as possible, we want everything that we produce to do no harm.

In the future, we hope to create products that use recycled wood, among some other ideas. But for now, we are so happy that all of our Dance Daze Dance Boards are made with FSC Certified wood!