I love to watch people dance, especially ballet and tap. I don’t dance. I did try an adult ballet class many years ago when my own kids were taking dance classes, but decided to vicariously enjoy dance through watching my kids. My oldest granddaughter started dancing seven years ago (at two and a half) and shortly after, my daughter Melinda, began dancing again. You can read her story she wrote in this post a few years back. Some of you who have been following our blog may have wondered why Melinda was not writing posts. Fast forward to the present and Melinda is not only dancing, she is teaching several dance classes and private lessons, doing choreography, co-teaching two musical theater classes with her husband, and all four of her children dance as well. She is focusing most of her creative energies into the dance studio and doing an amazing job! They put on two wonderful dance recitals a year and this spring I volunteered to paint the backdrops needed for the June recital. So instead of dancing a recital, I was painting a dance recital!

With the theme “Dance Through the Decades” they wanted several ways of listening to music through the decades represented to hang on the back curtain. Loaded up with pieces of cardboard and acrylic paint, I began drawing, cutting and painting each piece. The first item I made was a large jukebox. My kitchen island was the easiest place for me to work on these pieces.

The next creation was a gramophone…

A radio…

A phonograph…

A boombox…

A Walkman cassette player…

A portable CD player…

An iPod…

A smartphone…

And of course, some 45’s, LP records, and CD’s!

The pieces all looked huge in my house, and not so huge hanging on the back curtain! But they made a nice backdrop for the dance numbers.

If you didn’t read Melinda’s post mentioned above, this is the little girl, My Princess, who started this new generation of dancers in our family seven and a half years ago.

And here she is today dancing along with her brother. (These are frame captures from video I recorded so the pictures are not real sharp.)

Miss Tickles (the inspiration for the name of this blog) demonstrates for her younger brother’s class as well as dancing with her own classes.

I enjoyed painting a dance recital and who knows what I might paint next!