by Norm Ramil / 8ca.music.person & dance.fan

What’s next to your high school’s parking lot? Athletic fields? Subdivisions? How ‘bout a zoo?

Riverside-Brookfield is right next to Brookfield Zoo, and each time I’ve visited their dance team the past couple summers, I’ve been tempted to just make a day out of it and check out the animals. I mean, they have peacocks roaming around loose inside Brookfield Zoo, so that’s an automatic win, right?

Its official name is the Chicago Zoological Park, which is kind of old school. And speaking of old school, RBHS has been around since 1909! History fans love the old architecture and curved streets in both Riverside and Brookfield. Personally, I’m also a big fan of their dance team’s name, the Pupettes.

The recently renovated campus includes a nice dance room where the RB Dance Team shares space with the school’s orchesis program, both run by Coach Madelyn Doyle. Before last season, the program focused on pom routines when they competed in TDI and in their first few IHSA seasons. The Pupettes shook things up and brought a fierce dark jazz routine to comps last year, picking up a 2A win at the Hersey competition in December, and a 2nd place to Fenton at the conference comp in January. Just two seniors moved on, so with most of the team returning, the Riverside-Brookfield dancers are poised to make back-to-back state appearances for the first time in six years. You probably won’t find a bulldog exhibit at a zoo, but these days, you’ll probably see Pupettes in Bloomington.

Official Team Name: 

Riverside-Brookfield Pupettes (school mascot: Bulldogs)

Class:

IHSA 2A

Conference:

Metro Suburban

Coach:

Madelyn Doyle, 3rd season

Team Breakdown:

An extra-large thank you goes out to Coach Doyle, since this article’s been two years in the making! Also a shout out to one of last year’s seniors, McKenna, for her interview a couple summers ago when we were learning all about RB Dance. Here’s our email interview:

Does your team have any technical specialties or stuff you’re really good at, and what are you hoping to improve on this year?

The girls love working on their jumps, leaps and turns. We are really pushing for multiples and varying combinations of turns this year! They also LOVE conditioning workouts!

What style of dance will you bring to competition?

Contemporary.

What skills do dancers need to be on the Pupettes?

A la seconde turns, center leaps and a calypso.

Do a lot of your dancers have studio training in their backgrounds?

Yes, the majority of them have been dancing together since they were young at the local studios. This provides a really great environment for the girls in practice!

What are some team activities throughout the summer and fall?

Summer time we have a bunch of camps and outings! This year the girls went to the beach, did the parade and had a couple of pool days! They also love bonfires at each others houses. We try to plan at least one event a month for team bonding whether it’s going to the pumpkin patch in the fall or walking down the street to get ice cream together!

Can you tell us more about your performance and competition schedule throughout the year?

Practice schedule is 3 days a week unless there’s a game on Fridays. We do conditioning on Wednesdays, and the other days we work on choreography for the games. Competition season has practices every day and we work on choreography and technical conditioning as well.

What’s a typical practice like, and do you have your own practice space?

We practice in both the dance studio and the gym. We assign one warm-up leader per week, and they can pretty much do what they want. We have anywhere from pilates warm ups, to relay races with jump ropes! We then work on skills, and choreography for the remainder of our time.

What’s your coaching philosophy?

I believe that your environment is everything! Having a group that lacks support or is competitive against each other can really bog a team down. We focus so much on supporting each other and helping each girl become the best dancer that they can be! We all want the same thing for ourselves and for each other.

Your program looked like it took a big step forward last season. How were you able to accomplish that? What’s the plan for building on that success?

This is only my 3rd year coaching ANYTHING. The studio I grew up in did not compete, so it was a new side of dance that I was not familiar with. The first year I coached was definitely a learning and growing year. I brought a lot of my regular PE dance class dancers to poms and they helped shape the program a lot. They then recognized that they really enjoyed IHSA competition and we just really progressed from there. We are primarily focused on bringing dance awareness to our school and want to keep building towards a strong team by doing so.

Any favorite memories from last season?

Just the energy of the girls when they won their first competition. It was a great way to start the season, and let them know that they were capable of accomplishing greatness, because I don’t think they believed in themselves before then.

What are you looking forward to this season?

Beating ourselves. That was the motto we had last year. We never tried to compare ourselves to other teams, we just wanted to get better and score better than the time before.

Other teams you guys are fans of?

All of them! We love watching the other groups, and we all know how hard it is to work towards success. We just admire every school and their dedication to their team and dance.

What’s it like to be part of the ultra-competitive 2A division?

Like I said before, we just admire all of the work that everyone puts into their routines and the level that everyone performs at. It’s great to be a part of a division like this because it just pushes us to work that much harder!

Can you tell us more about dance at RB? I remember you’d mentioned before that many of the girls do orchesis…

We have tons of dance at RB! We have dance classes that anyone can take for PE credit, and we also have an advanced/honors level dance class called Repertory Dance Ensemble. Orchesis happens in the spring and that is extra-curricular. We have so many dancers that do everything, and it’s especially great to have the consistency to build such a strong dance environment here!

Fun / quirky facts about the team and its members, or any extra things you’d like to add

Pia: Always remembers every-single-count to every-single-dance! Finally learned how to spot.

Briyana/Brana/Brona: Our chatter box…always talking about something unrelated…

Bella: Has a serious addiction to spray tan and self tanner.

Catherine/Cathy/Cath: Cannot go one day or practice without falling.

Kellie: Always has the most energy and is always ready to go! Screams a lot…

Quincy/New Quincy: Mother to both Brana and Ava… Forgets all of her items–all the time. Is trying to turn over a new leaf hence the “New Quincy.”

Captain Kori: Gets really high pitched and speeds up her talking when she’s excited. Also starts jumping.

Angela: So positive and always wants the best for everyone! Has a cackling problem…

Kassie: Our hip hop queen! Came to the first choreography clinic and said, “I don’t know what kind of dance this is (contemporary), but I got this.”

Riverside-Brookfield Dance at State

TDI 2008: 16th in AA Hip Hop

TDI 2009: 4th in AA Open Pom

TDI 2010: 5th in AA Open Pom

TDI 2011: 5th in AA Open Pom

TDI 2012: 6th in 2A Open Pom

IHSA 2015: 15th in 2A

IHSA 2018: 24th in 2A