Oh, and I have alredy done a cursory search of thsi tribe and ran across Ocean's blog posting about installing one: people.tribe.net/oceanostt...32131f0068

Plan to print that out and use it for reference for sure!!

What kind of dancing do you propose doing in your studio? Our studio is bellydance-only, so laminate floors work fine for us (folks check their shoes at the door).
PS our first studio floor was laminate over the existing old commercial carpet - my Home Depot Trainer sister's idea - worked nicely. But that was the third floor, not ground-floor-concrete. We are now on a second floor, concrete on the bottom, commercial laminate padding, then laminate.. works fine for classes. If daughter is doing a practice marathon, she wears dance shoes for support... but if most of the users are not going to practice on it more than an hour a day, the laminate is fine.

If we ever get to the point where we are sure we will stay in business, we may install real dance floors. Right now the agreement with the landlord is - if we have to break the lease, then he gets the laminate floor and the lighting, goodbye that's all.

We actually thought about making our own but decided in the interests of time to forgo. If I ever decide to do it I'd probably do it a test space at a time using something like this:
www.judoinfo.com/tatami.htm
www.aikidoonline.com/Archive...099.html
I read about folks using tires as the springs but, as someone said, unless they are all the same size and new how can you control the result?

Can't say much about one type of flooring over another, but how exciting about the possibility of a Studio in Fairbanks! Good luck with that and here's wishes that it comes to be a reality!

I put a dance studio in my basement (with lots of thought...) I used a dimpled plastic underlayment that is made for basements (water drainage), that is glued to 3x3 OSB. over that I got a high quality dense foam that I rolled out and and then installed engineered flooring with no grooves (bamboo flooring). I had a professional dancer friend come over and test it with me. My legs felt terrific after hours on the floor - plus it is very comfortable temperature wise. My friend said that she could barely tell the difference that it wasn't a sprung floor. (She should know). It has just the right amount of give and spring to it and is wonderful to dance on, but without the high cost of a sprung floor system.

I created a nicely cushioned dance floor by laying 1/2" plywood over old ceiling tiles I scored from Freecycle. The down-side is that it is a permanent installation because you have to use 2" screws to get through the plywood and ceiling tiles. If you get nice looking plywood, all you have to do is put on a few layers of polyurethane and voila. If the plywood isn't so nice, you can cover it with laminate flooring instead or do what I did - I painted it with an oil based gray garage floor paint.

Good luck!