# Seamless Marley



## jstroming (Feb 19, 2011)

Has anyone ever tried some sort of double sided tape on the underside of Marley to eliminate the look of the tape on top of the marley? Plus when you get dancers on it from 7am-10pm for a week straight the tape gets kicked up and it looks AWFUL on video. I'm assuming there's some trick that gives it that "seamless" TV set look. Any ideas?


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## Sean (Feb 19, 2011)

Yes.

The Washington Ballet does just that. They're in my venue this week....I'll ask more if you'd like.

They put down 2" double-sided carpet tape on their sprung wood floor (they travel with a ply sub-floor) under where the Marley seams are. They _might_ put the carpet tape on top of gaff....I'll look.

Overall it works pretty well. The carpet tape is pretty aggressive....their floor has a foam backing that's degrading from the tape.

--Sean


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## Footer (Feb 19, 2011)

We lay marley for events pretty regulary, several of them are very high profile. First, the biggest thing is to use vinyl splicing tape instead of gaff. On a camera, it won't show up. With the naked eye it is still there. Rosco Dance Floors : Accessories : Floor Tapes

Also, you have to change it out regularly without question, especially before the show. There is no way to really get around that. 

Now as far as the Oscar/Jeopardy/whatever floor that looks perfectly seamless and reflective as a mirror, thats a different product all together. For the life of me I can't find the right thing.


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## metti (Feb 19, 2011)

I have never done this but I remember seeing a listing for double sided gaff tape in a theatre supply catalog recently. I could probably figure out who was selling it if you're interested.


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## jstroming (Feb 19, 2011)

Sean-
If you could find out some more info for me would be awesome.

Footer-
I'm going to purchase some of that and try it out on an upcoming show. I think GamFloor is what you're referring to. My next avenue of exploration is seeing if it can be put on the marley....I've worked on awards shows that use GamFloor religiously on every surface imaginable, but never directly over the marley.

Metti-
I use double-sided carpet tape to adhere rugs and carpeting down during trade shows, I'm assuming this is what you've seen.


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## kicknargel (Feb 22, 2011)

I would think, at least for ballet, that putting GamFloor over marley would be a no-go, since the main purpose of marley is that it has the correct slippiness/grippiness properties for dancing en pointe.

I've seen dance floor in permanent installations with double-sided tape and no tape on top. I'd think, though, that using the vinyl tape may hide the seams even better. If you use that in combination with double-stick you could reduce the gap between panels to near-zero. You'd want to heat the floor under show light conditions for a couple hours to make sure it's fully expanded, since you'll be giving it no room to expand.

Footer: that glassy seamless floor in White Christmas (the movie) haunts me. No GamFloor there.


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## MNBallet (Feb 24, 2011)

jstroming said:


> Has anyone ever tried some sort of double sided tape on the underside of Marley to eliminate the look of the tape on top of the marley? Plus when you get dancers on it from 7am-10pm for a week straight the tape gets kicked up and it looks AWFUL on video. I'm assuming there's some trick that gives it that "seamless" TV set look. Any ideas?


 
Are we talking about a permanent or temp floor? There are products to make a dance floor seamless called floor welding. It's basically melting plastic to fill the cracks and joins rolls together. it also depends on the dance floor for tape that doesn't show. Clear vinyl dance tape doesn't show on our grey marbled dance floor, but black gaff on our black floor does. Some people do not know that you can get gaff in colors too, so a grey gaff on a grey floor helps.
My tape looks just as good as the first day I laid it as a week later when we rip it up. If your tape looks like hell after only a week I might suggest looking for another tape company / supplier. Sure after a month in the studio it looks bad, but not one week. I replace our studio tape monthly.

Ken Pogin
Production / Tour Manager
Minnesota Ballet


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## Footer (Feb 24, 2011)

MNBallet said:


> Are we talking about a permanent or temp floor? There are products to make a dance floor seamless called floor welding. It's basically melting plastic to fill the cracks and joins rolls together. it also depends on the dance floor for tape that doesn't show. Clear vinyl dance tape doesn't show on our grey marbled dance floor, but black gaff on our black floor does. Some people do not know that you can get gaff in colors too, so a grey gaff on a grey floor helps.
> My tape looks just as good as the first day I laid it as a week later when we rip it up. If your tape looks like hell after only a week I might suggest looking for another tape company / supplier. Sure after a month in the studio it looks bad, but not one week. I replace our studio tape monthly.
> 
> Ken Pogin
> ...


 
You guys don't go with vinyl tape? We have had in waaaay to many dance company's come in and yell and scream about using gaff to do seams, so we switched over the the vinyl tape. We still do the ends of the marley with gaff. We do mostly modern with the occasional ballet. We have found the modern dancers hate the gaff more then the ballet types.


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## MNBallet (Feb 24, 2011)

Footer said:


> You guys don't go with vinyl tape? We have had in waaaay to many dance company's come in and yell and scream about using gaff to do seams, so we switched over the the vinyl tape. We still do the ends of the marley with gaff. We do mostly modern with the occasional ballet. We have found the modern dancers hate the gaff more then the ballet types.


 
I use both. My dancers do like the vinyl tape more as they claim it has same feel as the floor. But in our studio I now use a grey gaff because after years there has been dirt combined with the glue residue and clear tape just shows years of that crud, a clean grey tape looks cleaner. I could try the grey vinyl, I've only been using the clear... At least my dancers do not complain about gaff. (they are too busy complaining about how cold the theater is) But you are right, the vinyl has no holding power at the ends to hold the stretch, or to hold to the stage for that matter. Vinyl tape only sticks to the dance floor. I use the vinyl tape more on tour because it is cheaper than gaff. 

Here is where I get my tape:
Dance Floor Tape - Goodbuyguys.com

Ken Pogin
Production / Tour Manager
Minnesota Ballet


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## Sean (Feb 24, 2011)

OK, so the word from the Washington Ballet:

Double-sided carpet tape on the sub floor (their sprung wooden dance floor) and the dance floor on top. The carpet tape isn't too sticky....doesn't pull the poly off of the wood floor, but does hold the vinyl floor pretty well.

I will say, their floor always looks great. They do a really good job with the floor. Most of the time they use a light gray floor.

That's what I've got


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## jstroming (Feb 24, 2011)

Sean-
Thanks for the info!


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## Footer (Feb 24, 2011)

Sean said:


> Most of the time they use a light gray floor.
> 
> That's what I've got


 
Thats probably the key to why they do this. There are several shades of gray out there of marley and unless your tape matches perfectly its going to look odd.


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## Grog12 (Feb 25, 2011)

MNBallet said:


> I use both. My dancers do like the vinyl tape more as they claim it has same feel as the floor. But in our studio I now use a grey gaff because after years there has been dirt combined with the glue residue and clear tape just shows years of that crud, a clean grey tape looks cleaner. I could try the grey vinyl, I've only been using the clear... At least my dancers do not complain about gaff. (they are too busy complaining about how cold the theater is) But you are right, the vinyl has no holding power at the ends to hold the stretch, or to hold to the stage for that matter. Vinyl tape only sticks to the dance floor. I use the vinyl tape more on tour because it is cheaper than gaff.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Funny our studios are all done with doublesided underneath but we didn't do floor welding. When we're on tour we use gaff all around. Our dancers didn't mind the vinyl tape that came with our floor originally but around hear it was pricing out about the same as gaff. 

Where it gets even more convuluted is that when we were putting clear vinyl over our spike marks it was causing an issue with some of the dancer because it was more slippery than the floor which was a probelm when they were en pointe.


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