It’s Saturday afternoon, the perfect day to relax and hang out with friends. For the members of the Youth Unlimited Tap Company of Schaumburg, however, it’s anything but leisure time.
Saturday is serious rehearsal time. A show is only a few weeks away, and the 11 tap dancers are getting ready to go where few youth dance troupes in this area have gone: the professional stage.
Youth Unlimited is the brainchild of Bruce Stegmann, founder and artistic director of Especially Tap Company, a professional tap troupe based in Bartlett. According to Stegmann, Youth Unlimited is one of the few, if not only, area youth dance groups to perform at professional shows.
Although Youth Unlimited’s members don’t get paid for their performances, Stegmann treats them as if they were professionals.
“Few of these students will ever become professional dancers,” Stegmann says. “I want to give them the chance to feel like professionals.”
Stegmann formed Youth Unlimited earlier this year, auditioning about 30 students from Dorothy’s Dancing Unlimited in Schaumburg. Of those, 11 girls, ages 10 to 14, were selected and signed to an open-ended agreement that bound them to three Saturday practices per month lasting two to three hours each, and mandatory summer classes.
Stegmann says he chose to base his youth troupe out of Dancing Unlimited because the studio is near his Bartlett home.
“It was because of time constraints,” he says. “I wanted to get one up and running quickly.”
Although all Youth Unlimited members are enrolled in dance classes at Dancing Unlimited, Stegmann may conduct an open audition as early as this fall to expand the troupe.
Stegmann’s timing in fielding a youth tap company is opportune as tap is experiencing a resurgence. “Tap keeps re-emerging, and as a tap lover, you keep hoping it will come back,” says Irene Kruse, owner of Dance, Dance, Dance in Glen Ellyn.
More importantly, Youth Unlimited has the ability to make young dancers excited about tap. Kruse notes that for many of these young dancers, tap may have been relevant only to their parents or grandparents.
“Here’s a vibrant, exciting tap teacher who . . . is doing tap movements to very contemporary music that is based in funky jazz,” Kruse says. “Bruce just does this so well.”
Dressed in a T-shirt, baggy shorts, white socks with black tap shoes, plus a baseball cap atop salt-and-pepper hair tied in a ponytail, Stegmann belies the image of respect. But command it he does, particularly as he fine-tunes his dancers’ movements.
“Your feet are dancing with marbles. I don’t hear the sounds cleanly,” he says. “Give me that section with the riff step again.”
The girls run through the sequence several times without music. Stegmann approaches each dancer, listening to her technique, then tapping the correct rhythm. “Oh, that poor left foot,” he comments to one girl. The entire company can’t get the sound right, particularly with the left heel.
Stegmann explains: “Ninety percent of the time, it’s the left foot that’s weak. It doesn’t matter who you are. This is just taking the weak link and fine-tuning it to take the performance to where it needs to be. I find I need to do the same thing with my own tap company.”
Stegmann has taught and performed for more than 30 years, conducting master classes throughout the United States and Europe. He has served on the faculty of the St. Louis Tap Festival, Chicago Human Rhythm Project and the St. Paul Tap Festival. For the last seven years, he’s been a staff member at Dancing Unlimited. Establishing a youth troupe was something he had in mind for a long time.
“I wanted to give something back (to dance),” he says. And with the birth of his first child, Jonathan, last October, he decided that with life getting busier, he had better get to his project.
Stegmann says selection of members for Youth Unlimited was based not so much on talent as it was on their dedication and desire to succeed.
“I could have made this open to an older group of kids who have more experience,” he explains. “It’s not so much about talent as it is a pat on the back and a boost to their self-esteem. (Selecting the members) is a fact that I see something special in you and that I’m giving you a feeling of self-assurance. Give me child who gives 110 percent and I’ll take that child every time.”
Despite the different levels of talent among company members, the group is cohesive. “What’s amazing is that he has meshed them and taught them to dance together,” says Cheryl Costa, mother of dancer Andrea Costa, 12, of Schaumburg.
Such dedication inspires great loyalty in his troupe members, says Dancing Unlimited’s owner, Dorothy Kirshenbaum of Carol Stream.
“He gives 150 percent and he expects 150 percent,” Kirshenbaum says. “They respect him and look up to him and he makes them want to work hard.”
Dedication is evident in the way the girls approach practice. Before the session formally begins, several dancers are already hard at work on sections of “Hocus Pocus,” a tap number that Stegmann hopes will become a signature piece.
“This is much better than going out with your friends,” says Robin Russo, 14, of Roselle. “Most of my friends just go to the mall. This gives me something better to do.”
Many of the company’s members have taken dance lessons since age 3 or 4 and cite tap as their favorite form of dance. “I like the noise, the rhythm, the opportunity to perform to people other than friends and family,” says Tammy Lin, 12, of Schaumburg.
Allison Reese, 12, of Elk Grove Village, auditioned for the troupe at the urging of friends. “They were always telling me I was the best dancer, and I had never done anything like this before, so I decided to try out,” she says.
Opportunity is the working word here. Other than Dancing Unlimited’s annual show or occasional local theater productions, weekly classes had provided the only outlet for these girls. Youth Unlimited’s first performance came in May when Especially Tap Company staged a benefit for David Lamb, a Schaumburg youth suffering from leukemia.
“It was confusing at first because you didn’t know when to come on, you didn’t know where to go,” Tammy says. Youth Unlimited also performed with the Human Rhythm Project at the Athenaeum Theatre in Chicago in July.
Parents of company members view these performances as character-building experiences.
“They’re very conscious of how they’re performing,” says Lori Pendzimaz of Schaumburg, mother of Kim, 12, a member of the troupe. “There’s a definite benefit to that.”
Stegmann acknowledges he’s trying to give his troupe members something extra, saying, “It’s the focus that they achieve through this that they will carry with them throughout their lives.”
