Tiny Tappers Need Your Help to Fund National Competition Trip

They may have danced "It's a Hard Knock Life" but life is looking pretty fabulous these days for five tiny tappers who clinched the Starbound nationals last month.
  
The talented 6- and 7-year-old Starlettes won Top Overall in the Junior Petite division of the Starbound National Talent Competition for the Lakeside Academy of Dance on Saybrook Road in Middletown on April 13.

These little ladies earned top duet overall, top junior petite overall, three highest scoring solos overall and many high golds and elite trophies.

The girls, students of Kerri Lake, are now in fundraising mode to earn money to pay for travel and airfare to Atlantic City, N.J., in July for the national competition. 

Liz Cardello, mom of Starlette Maddy Cardello, 6, says they also competed last year and have been very well together. 

On May 20, Illiano's Pizzaria on South Main street will be hosting a 10-percent fundraising event all day and night to help the tappers raise money to go to nationals. We are also planning to do a 50/50 raffle. 

Rita's Ice & Custard in Rocky Hill has also allowed the tappers to hold a fundraiser on June 10 from 6-9 p.m., when 20 percent of the sales will go to the girls.

During Lakeside Academy of Dance's annual car wash at Ace Hardware on South Main Street, students will be selling 50/50 tickets to also help raise money. Half of the ticket sales will go to the winner that will be announced at the Rita's Fundraiser (need not be present to win).

The Starlettes have solos, trios and other dances that they perform on stage without thinking twice about going in front of all of those people, Cardello says. 
"We hope others will see how happy they are when they are together as a team and help us make this happen for them."