CEDAR VALLEY, IOWA · 2026 EMERGENCY PILOT
Some walls are financial.
Some are racial.
All of them come down.
Rhythm & Bloom dismantles the barriers that keep talented young people out of competitive performing arts — and surrounds every scholar with a Mentor Family that breaks generational cycles long after the season ends.
WHY WE EXIST
Talent has never been the barrier.
The wall has.
In Cedar Valley, competitive performing arts costs a family $8,000–$12,000 every year. For elite athletes, far more. For families of color, for families already stretched thin — that price is not an inconvenience. It is a wall built at the intersection of race and income, and it has been standing for decades.
Rhythm & Bloom exists to take that wall down. Not with a scholarship and a wave goodbye — with a complete investment. Every scholar receives a Mentor Family: a Root who shows up every week, a Bloom who holds their future when they can't see it, and a Stem who stands next to them before the hardest performance of their season.
R&B is not a dance program. Dance is how we start. Breaking generational cycles is why we exist.
R&B'S FIRST GENERATIONAL GROVE
The cycle stops here.
Brylee is 13. Isla is 11. Esmae is 9. In the 2023–24 season, all three competed — teams and solos. Then, the money ran out.
Last season, Isla and Esmae sat out. Brylee competed alone. Their mom kept private lessons going anyway.
Brylee came back this season bolder — fighting for stage time, earning the opportunity, and proving she could keep up with those she looks up to. Isla and Esmae? Came back NOT where they were. Better. Highlighted in team routines. Dominating.
The oldest showed them how. The younger ones watched. That's what this family does.
Dance costs $35,000— 34 cents of every dollar their family earns. They are in debt to their studio.
And they are still here. Still fighting. Still dominating.
Two younger sisters are watching everything Brylee, Isla, and Esmae do next.
In this family, what these three girls choose matters beyond them.
The Schillings didn't come to R&B looking for charity. They came because Jess recognized that these three girls have the potential to change their whole family's trajectory — and she needed a partner who saw it too. R&B saw it.
Jessica and Justin have spent years giving to their community — coaching youth sports, organizing cancer fundraisers, supporting other families, rescuing animals. Their daughters work hard, dream big, and want to pour into others the same way their parents do.
They've earned this. And they cannot do it alone.
R&B's investment sets all three up for the 2026–27 season — auditions in May, summer training in July. It does not rescue them. It removes the wall that was never supposed to be there in the first place.
This is not three scholarships. It is one family line that refused to let the cycle start — and R&B making sure they never have to fight this hard again.
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