With a name like Dance, this Roxburgh family was destined to be in sync.
And they prove it every time the Roxburgh Pioneer Generation Brass Band performs, with three generations of the family making up almost a quarter of the band.
Grandparents Doug and Jean Dance (72 and 73 respectively), their son Daniel, their daughter Victoria Napier and their grandchildren, Greer (11) and Jesse (13) Orchard - Mrs Napier's son and daughter - performed with the band for a Christmas variety show in Roxburgh last night titled Teviot's Top Talent.
Greer, her mother and grandmother all play the tenor horn, Doug is on the B-flat bass and Daniel and his nephew Jesse are on percussion.
The family agree music is in the blood.
''I had no choice, really. Apparently I was on stage a week before I was born,'' Daniel joked.
He got his first drum kit at the age of 8 and has been in the band since he was 10 or 11, about 27 years in total.
Mrs Napier says she was a ''late starter'' compared with her younger brother, and has been performing in bands for ''only'' two decades.
Jesse learns the drums from his uncle and has been in the band for two years, while his younger sister is enjoying her first year as a band member.
Their grandparents have been making music for more than 55 years and were also following in family footsteps.
Mrs Dance's father, Donald Gordon, was in the Roxburgh band which won the C Grade national championship in 1926.
The band, which evolved into the Roxburgh brass band, had its beginnings in the town almost 130 years ago.
Mrs Dance said it was ''excellent'' to have two of her five children and two of her eight grandchildren performing alongside her.
There were no family spats on stage - ''there's no prima donnas'', Mrs Napier explained.
Doug says it is unusual to have three generations of one family in a brass band and it will be a first for the Roxburgh band when all six family members compete in the national brass band championships in Invercargill in July.
