Alan Chaplin was a composition teacher of mine while studying for a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree at California Institute of the Arts (1975-78). After learning of Alan's passing in 2016 and of his early interest in Latin music, I decided to look at Latin rhythms to compose an homage to my teacher. While I do not claim the Kaleidoscope Dances are authentic Latin music, each one draws on a basic Latin dance rhythm: Dancing Sky (salsa); Wind Glide (samba); Ocean Float (bolero); Mystic Wave (tango). While composing these pieces, I paid special attention to the colors available in the instrumentation (a wind quintet, string quartet, and marimba) and each piece is like a kaleidoscope in the sense that it hands the same melody and harmony around to different voices as the piece transposes keys to accommodate the pitch range of the instrument carrying the melody. I recall Morton Subotnick (another of my teachers at CalArts) suggesting that sometimes it is good to look at a single musical idea from several different places - like turning the pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope.