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.