ABOUT RHYTHM & BLOOM
Not a scholarship program.
A generational intervention.
Dance is how we start. Breaking cycles is why we exist.
Built by someone who knows what’s at stake.
ABOUT THE FOUNDER
Destiny “Tru” Cyrus is a Licensed Physical Therapist Assistant, competitive dance educator, and the founder of Rhythm & Bloom Performing Arts Equity. She grew up in Chicago — domestic violence in the home, gangs in the neighborhood, every structural condition that produces a statistic.
Dance changed her trajectory — not because it kept her busy, but because it gave her an identity, an outlet, a thing she owned completely. She spent her career watching that same transformation happen in the students she taught — and asking one question: How do I make this impact outlast me?
R&B is the answer. Not a program that exists while Tru exists. A structure — a board, a mentorship model, a pipeline, a community — that turns toward the light because that is what it was built to do.
MBA Candidate, WGU
Licensed PTA
Competitive Dance Educator
“I’m not asking you to believe in a spreadsheet. I’m asking you to invest in measurable results — and in young people who are already doing the work.”
The wall isn’t one thing. It’s three.
THE PROBLEM WE SOLVE
THE FINANCIAL WALL
1
Competitive performing arts costs $8,000–$12,000 per student per year. For families already stretched thin — the math is settled before the conversation starts. They don’t call back. Not because they don’t want to. Because they can’t.
2
THE RACIAL WALL
For the Black and brown students who do make it in, the financial barrier is only the beginning. Every day in a predominantly white competitive space is navigation work. Code-switching. Hair. Lighting in photos. That is a full-time job on top of being a young person who loves to perform.
THE GENERATIONAL WALL
3
The student who never gets access doesn’t just miss dance. They carry a false belief forward: this wasn’t meant for me. Left untended, it becomes a generational pattern. R&B takes down all three walls.
30 years of research says this is the one.
WHY THIS MODEL WORKS
A 73-study meta-analysis confirmed that intensive small-cohort programs produce dramatically stronger outcomes than larger lighter-touch models. R&B’s 16-scholar cohort cap is not a limitation. It is the evidence-based discipline that produces those outcomes.
The Mentor Family model mirrors the structure that Thread Baltimore used to produce 92% graduation rates among students who entered with sub-1.0 GPAs. This is a proven model applied, for the first time, to competitive performing arts in the rural Midwest.
R&B'S FIRST GENERATIONAL GROVE
Meet the Schilling Family
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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