Stephanie Wolf reports on how the floor is increasing accessibility to music and dance.
There’s a vibrating dance floor in Colorado that translates instruments and notes in songs in real time. It works for both recorded and live music. Stephanie Wolf reports on how the floor is increasing accessibility to music and dance. Full transcript of the episode available below.
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EMILY FOX: There’s a dance school in Colorado where you literally feel the music. The various instruments and notes from a song are translated into vibrations through a special type of floor. The floor was made to increase accessibility to music and dance. Contributor Stephanie Wolf picks up the story from here.
STEPHANIE WOLF: Amber Andrews started dancing at the age of 5. They fell hard for tap. Then, in 2018, Andrews was diagnosed with hearing loss. And it changed Andrews’ experience of dance, particularly in a class setting.
ANDREWS: “Teachers are yelling out instructions, and especially like a tap class or something where it's loud sound, I have a hard time picking up any music at all.”
WOLF: Trying to read an instructor’s lips. The sounds of tap shoes on the floor. Music. Andrews says it’s like the sound hits them all at once. But they’re also underwater. It’s overwhelming.
ANDREWS: “And so I spent a lot of time like putting my hand on the speaker in the classroom just trying to catch where the beat starts and ends.”
WOLF: Then Andrews found Feel the Beat, where they now work and teach. Feel the Beat is a Denver-area studio that offers inclusive dance classes for people who are Hard of Hearing, Deaf and really anyone. The idea is that dance and music are for all. Here, Andrews doesn’t have to put a hand on a speaker.
ANDREWS: “I don’t need that. I don't need an instructor to tell me where we're going. . . because I can feel the music through my body. I’m like hearing through my legs.”
WOLF: What Andrews is hearing – or feeling – through their legs is Feel the Beat’s vibrating floor.
JULIA FALIANO: “I think that music is so important to all of us.”
WOLF: This is Julia Faliano, co-founder of Feel the Beat. She helped dream up the idea of this vibrating dance floor. At the nonprofit’s studio in the suburb of Lakewood, Colorado, Faliano switches on the sound system. . . She’s demonstrating how the floor works.
FALIANO: “The sounds coming through bone conduction right now. So it's not coming through the air and hitting your eardrum. It's actually coming through your skeletal system and vibrating your ossicles.”
WOLF: Ossicles - those tiny bones in your middle ear.
Underneath this floor are 32 bone conduction transducers. Bone conduction traditionally sidesteps the eardrum and converts sound energy into vibrations that can reach the inner ear. It’s similar to the technology found in some hearing aids.
FALIANAO: “If you are a person with a conductive hearing loss, this floor circumvents the broken part of your auditory system... So for them, it's like stepping on a giant hearing aid.”
WOLF: For those with inner-ear or sensorineural hearing loss, the floor won’t suddenly make it so they can hear the music.
FALIANO: “But it does give you that full spectrum of tactile sound. And so I think… depending on the skill level and the familiarity of the dancer or the child, with some explicit instruction on like, Hey, slow down, feel this beat … Can you tap this beat on your thighs? Can you tap this beat on your tummy? Like, kids definitely pick up on the rhythm.”
WOLF: Faliano says students also recognize whether a song is slow or fast. The Feel the Beat co-founder got hooked on the idea of accessible music through her work as a public-school teacher. Throughout her career, she’s worked with students who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing. And during her first year of teaching, she met a student who was deaf-blind. Faliano took the young girl to music class. And the student would touch each instrument. For example, she’d touch the underside of a drum…
FALIANO: “where she could feel the vibration without dampening it. She just had this really innate ability to interact with music, even though she'd never heard it.”
WOLF: That inspired Faliano to take more students with hearing loss to music class. She soon saw improvement in their gross motor skills, coordination and academics. She and another teacher tried to find hearing-inclusive music programs outside of school. But they came up with nothing. They ended up creating their own music and dance classes. But before they could do that, they needed something that would make the music accessible to those who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing. They landed on bone conduction technology because it would transcribe the low notes, high notes, in between notes, shifting notes, all of them, into distinctly different vibrations. They eventually commissioned a design team to build out a bone conduction dance floor.
[pop music plays]
FALIANO: “So this song’s pretty bass heavy. I'll change it to orchestral music. It's really interesting to feel like string instruments on the floor.”
[music changes]
WOLF: “It almost like tickles.”
FALIANO: “Yeah, a little bit yeah. So it's different than a bass sensation you would feel. You can more feel the cadence of the song and you can feel the sensation that there's more than one instrument playing.”
[orchestral music plays]
WOLF: “Does this sound weird to say that this actually feels like a violin?”
FALIANO: “No, it's not so weird at all. I could play piano next and I hear often that people can feel the keys or you can feel the guitar string being plucked.”
WOLF: Faliano suggests I sit on the floor to feel the piano track.
[piano music plays]
WOLF: “Yeah, I see what you mean by you could like almost feel the piano keys being pressed.”
WOLF: The vibrations on the backsides of my legs aren’t static. It’s not like it’s simply vibrating up and down. But rather, I can feel the vibrations move across the parts of my body connected directly to the floor. It’s like fingers gliding across a piano.
Today, Faliano is teaching a class for kids and teens from Megan’s Place. This is a Denver-area organization that offers after-school, evening or weekend care for minors with physical and developmental disabilities. The dancers from Megan’s Place go through head rolls, body isolations. They start to move across the floor. Faliano pulls out scarves for the young dancers to move and sway with. All the while, the bone conduction floor pulsates below. Sending vibrations up the dancers’ bodies and wheelchairs.
You can also feel the beat at Brewability in the south Denver suburb of Englewood. The brewery and pizzeria employs people with disabilities. It promotes accessibility in its physical space too. And because live music has long been a central fixture at Brewability – management had a Feel the Beat bone conduction dance floor installed last year.
On this Saturday night, musician Kelechi Onyebuchi plays a solo set. Mark McDonald, who is Hard of Hearing, sits crossed leg on the floor. He gently pulls his six-year-old son, Braeden, onto his lap. Braedon, who is hearing, wears noise-canceling headphones this close to the PA system. They sit on the floor like this, swaying ever so slightly to the song’s melodic vibrations.
McDonald later tells me in an email that the floor feels great. His wife is Deaf. And he and his family come to Brewability as often as they can. He describes the vibrations as “an extension of the music.” He loves “the physical connection” it provides to each song. And writes, quote, “It is similar to the physical touch of another person, like an embrace, hug or massage.”
Brewability owner Tiffany Fixter says it’s been interesting to witness people’s responses to the floor.
TIFFANY FIXTER: “Ya know, even adults with autism lay on the floor and just love the vibration. We've had little kids that are experiencing music for the first time and honestly, even if you don't have a disability, I think it just adds to the overall experience of music.”
WOLF: Brewability turns on the floor during live music performances, so people with a hearing impairment can dance along to the beat with everyone else.
Stephanie Silvestain soon takes to the floor with a coworker. Silvestain works behind the bar at Brewability. And right now, she beams as her colleague raises an arm to spin her.
WOLF: “What does it feel like when you dance on it?”
STEPHANIE SILVESTAIN: “It feels, it feels like good vibrations… you can just feel your feet with it. You can just dance with it. And I love it so much.”
Jacob Ruth steps away briefly from working in the kitchen. He’s eager to talk about the floor. But not about how it feels. He wants to talk about what it represents. Because he hears a lot of talk about diversity, equity and inclusion. And he supports all of that. But also…
JACOB RUTH: “Sometimes I'm wondering, hm, was that inclusion for people with disabilities? … So if we're trying to preach this message now, what are the actions from everybody else when they talk about it.”
WOLF: Basically, he wants to make sure people with disabilities aren’t left out of these conversations. And that more actions are taken – like installing a vibrating dance floor – to ensure all kinds of experiences, including art, are inclusive.
That might take some creativity around thinking about what other senses you can engage – whether that’s making a painting tactile, or audio description for dance or feeling the vibrations of music. But it was unanimous among those I spoke to: putting inclusivity at the forefront, can make the art experience better for everyone.
For Sound & Vision, I’m Stephanie Wolf in Denver
