Dance Showcase honors Naperville teen
Kathryn Bender always wanted to make a difference.
She was smart and she was pretty and she was talented. She could sing and she could act. She played the flute and the piano and performed with the Naperville North High School poms.
And, goodness gracious, the girl loved to dance.
But if you wanted to take Kathryn's full measure, you couldn't look at how she performed in the classroom or on the stage. You had to look deeper.
If you needed something, she always was the first one to lend a hand. If you were looking for volunteers, you didn't have to ask Kathryn twice.
“Everybody thought of her as this sweet, caring young lady,” her older sister, Elizabeth Bender, says. “She always wanted to volunteer and help people.”
The girl with a smile that could melt an ice cube during the Arctic winter died in November 2005.
A senior at Naperville North, she was doing what she loved, preparing to take the stage during a dance recital at Waubonsie Valley High School, when her heart betrayed her.
There were no symptoms, no easy answers. The medical people called it “sudden death.”
“It all just happened in one day,” her older sister says. “It was very abrupt.”
The passing of the 17-year-old girl who adored ballet and always wanted to help left a hole in virtually everyone who knew her. But it wasn't the end of her story.
It was only the beginning.
Finding their heart
When Kathryn died, it would have been easy for her family to retreat into their pain and loss, but they didn't.
Instead, they rallied around Kathryn's memory to do what they thought she would have done: help others.
They created the Kathryn Bender Memorial Foundation and, in 2006, partnered with the Midwest Heart Foundation in a program called Young Hearts For Life.
The idea is to raise money to purchase portable EKG machines and provide screenings for as many high school students at as many schools as possible.
In the past five years, Midwest Heart teams have visited 40 area high schools — returning every two years — and screened about 50,000 students for potential heart health problems.
Elizabeth Bender, who participates whenever her schedule allows, says roughly 2 percent to 3 percent of students who go through the screenings wind up being referred to their primary-care physicians for follow-up visits.
“It's hard to say if it would have helped Kathryn,” she says, “but it has helped others.”
The Dance
To support that work, the Bender Foundation conducts two major fundraisers a year. One is a 5K run in the fall at Naperville North. The other is a spring dance recital that features hundreds of dancers from more than a dozen area studios.
The sixth annual Kathryn Bender Dance Showcase is scheduled for Saturday, May 21, at the College of DuPage's McAninch Arts Center at Fawell and Park boulevards in Glen Ellyn.
It opens at 6 p.m. with live music, a raffle and silent auction. The dance performances start at 7:30 p.m.
Performers will come from all over the area, including Orchesis groups from Naperville North, Metea Valley and Neuqua Valley high schools; DuPage Dance Team; Extension Dance Company; School of Performing Arts; Naperville Park District; Inside Out Dance Company; Hip Hop ConnXion; Steps Dance Center; Underground Arts Connection; Under Pressure; and MADD Rhythms Tap Company from Chicago.
Tickets are $15 for adults and $12 for students.
Elizabeth says organizers are hoping to attract more than 500 people and raise between $8,000 and $10,000 to help buy two more portable EKG machines.
In past years, she admits, most of those in attendance have known some of the dancers. This time, she says, organizers are hoping for more.
“We'd like to keep growing it,” she says. “People who come for the cause and not just to see their kids dance.”
Highlights of Saturday's show will include a musical-theater piece from “Alice in Wonderland” that will “blow people's minds with the costumes,” and a performance by MADD Rhythms, a tap group that's new to the show.
Elizabeth, who's the studio director at Steps Dance Center in Aurora, will bring 160 of her students onstage at the same time.
On a recent day, Elizabeth was struggling a little with her voice “because we were out rehearsing in the parking lot” and she was using her gym teacher voice.
She laughs. “Hopefully they won't all fall off the stage.”
‘Artsy' kid
Isn't it weird how some kids grow up to work in the family business and others have talents that seem to have no earthly connection to their parents?
The Bender kids are kind of a combination of both. Their parents had no inclination toward the arts at all, but all three kids gravitated to the stage.
Kathryn and Elizabeth took the typical little girl dance classes when they were young and simply fell in love with it.
Their brother, Nick, pursued an acting career that has led, most recently, to some radio voice-over work and an appearance on TV's “The Chicago Code.”
But their mom is a teacher in Naperville Unit District 203, and all three kids migrated in that direction, too. Nick teaches theater at Naperville North. Kathryn had been accepted at Northern Illinois University, where she planned to major in elementary education and minor in dance.
Elizabeth was a college senior when Kathryn died and entered the working world as an industrial engineer.
“I got good benefits and blah, blah, blah,” she says, but something was missing. It took a few years before she knew what it was.
She returned to Steps, where she once taught, and told the owner she wanted back in. Now she's the studio director, sharing her love of dance with a whole new generation.
“I decided to pursue my passion,” she says. “A lot of it stems from Kathryn. I wanted to go back to what I love.”
Chubby face
Look at a picture of Kathryn and she seems like a serious kind of girl. But talk to those who knew her and they'll tell you she had a great sense of humor that seemed to rise out of the moment.
“She had a contagious smile and a contagious laugh,” Elizabeth says.
“She would make this face,” her sister says. “She would call it her ‘chubby face,' where she squeezed her cheeks together and talked in this really weird voice.”
Some of those memories are likely to come flooding back Saturday when Elizabeth and Nick dance together, as they do each year, to honor their sister.
This time they'll perform to “Stand By Me” and, as always, it will be choreographed as if there is a third person sharing the stage. In many ways, there is.
“Right before I go on stage I'm constantly thinking about her,” Elizabeth says. “She's almost there, right next to us. I can almost envision her being on stage.”
In past years, there have been moments during their dance when she and Nick can hear people sobbing in the audience.
“Having her present with us in spirit while we're doing the dance helps us get through it,” she says.
Making a difference
Kathryn Bender always wanted to make a difference. She never could have imagined that six years after her passing, she still inspires young dancers to step into the spotlight and that the foundation created in her memory is still helping save other young people.
The girl with the big heart and the contagious smile, the girl who loved ballet and making her chubby face, is still changing people's lives.
Elizabeth Bender smiles at the thought.
“It all happened,” she says, “because of one person.”
If you go
What: Sixth annual Kathryn Bender Dance Showcase
Why: To raise money to purchase portable EKG machines
When: 6 p.m. Saturday, May 21
Where: College of DuPage's McAninch Arts Center, Fawell and Park boulevards, Glen Ellyn
Tickets: $15 for adults, $12 for students and seniors
Info: kbmf.net