Baton

“Lordy mercy, (oh no, does that sound like my grandmother?) will she ever run out of old dancing pictures?” I’m getting close to the end. I think I have just one more after this unless I run across some more old negatives and that isn’t likely to happen.

Besides taking tap, I took ballet and baton for a very short time not long enough to get very good at either of them. I did have this picture made with my baton. I remember especially the sundress that I had on. It was really short, but I loved that dress. I talked my mother into letting me wear it to school one day. It’s a wonder they didn’t send me home. I really liked ballet. I especially liked the soft leather shoes. The soles were soft leather like the tops. They were not the ballet shoes that you usually see. I didn’t get that far along. But I loved those little shoes. Wish I had a picture of them. I don’t – but I still remember them well.

An Irish Dance

Since yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day, I’m still in an Irish kind of mood. It reminded me of this tap dance we performed way back in the “dark ages”.

The dance was called Irish Washer Woman. The skirts were really pretty. I’ve never seen any fabric like it since then. It was Irish green – really sparkly. The vests were black. I thought my mother made the best costume. I wish these pictures were in color, but they were taken before color photography. Wow. That WAS a long time ago.

Speaking of Irish tap dancing, I love the River Dance dancers. Haven’t seen them on TV in awhile, but I think they are fantastic.

More Reminiscing

Another tap dance my cousin and I performed was a Raggedy Ann and Andy dance. Here we are in our costumes. It isn’t easy to tap dance on grass. I’ve had the top picture forever, but just discovered the one on the grass recently. Being the only child, I inherited all my mother’s photos when she passed away several years ago. I was just recently looking through them again and ran across some old negatives. I can scan negatives on our scanner, so I did. I was so excited to see some pictures that I hadn’t seen since these pictures were taken. The original prints were probably sent to some relative at the time. I don’t remember ever seeing them.

We entered a Halloween costume contest that year wearing these costumes. There was a parade on the main street of Norwalk. We won “Most Unique”. That was fun.

DANCING

No, it’s not dancing with the stars. It’s dancing with my cousin. (the same one holding the football in the picture in my last post.) He was 11 years old. I was 10 when these pictures were taken at one of our dance recitals. I did enjoy tap dancing but got tired of practicing and going to class so I quit shortly after these pictures were taken. Jerry continued with a new partner for awhile.

Tap dancing was a big thing back in the 40s. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers may have had something to do with that.