Well-known dance studio owner

Dance studio owner noted for legendary annual recitals

Delores Eiler Bruns ~ 1925-2007

Back in its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, the Delores Eiler Schools of Dance operated as many as six studios across the North and Northwest suburbs.

What had started in Arlington Heights soon grew to include locations in Palatine, Northbrook, Deerfield, Barrington and Streamwood. There were no hip-hop offerings at the time, but Eiler and her staff taught everything else -- from ballet and tap, to swing dance and even acrobatics.

It has been nearly 30 years since the last studio was open, but her name still conjures up fond memories for thousands of former dance students.

Delores Eiler Bruns died Monday. Remarried to Raymond Bruns, and living in Antioch for the past 21 years, Mrs. Bruns was 82.

"She danced in the parades with her students until she was 55," her husband says. "She was so young-looking, people always thought Delores Eiler was her mother."

In fact, her mother, Ruby Black, managed her dance studios, and as a retired seamstress, helped make costumes for the school's annual recital.

Mrs. Bruns was born in Des Moines, Iowa, and early memories of dancing with her father, Richard Bernard, instilled a lifelong love of dancing.

During the Great Depression, Mrs. Bruns moved with her family to Arlington Heights, where relatives ran polo playing fields. Her father eventually opened the Bernard Car Dealership and sold Plymouth Chryslers as well as DeSotos.

Mrs. Bruns returned to Iowa to attend Grinnell College, where she majored in dance. Despite dreaming of a professional career, she returned to Arlington Heights and married John Eiler in 1946.

She opened her first dance studio in a space behind the former Eddie's Restaurant, on Northwest Highway in Arlington Heights, before taking over a former funeral home building which she and her husband converted into dance studios.

As the population boomed, numbers of dance students grew, and Mrs. Bruns gradually opened more locations to keep pace.

She also sought out performance opportunities for her students. They marched in local parades and performed at private functions throughout the year, and her acrobatics classes occasionally appeared on Bozo's Circus.

But Mrs. Bruns put most of her energy into the annual recital. Rather than have a running series of dances, Mrs. Bruns wrote her own musical theater productions, which wove in speaking and singing parts for her performing group students, and big dances for her general classes.

She began holding them at Arlington High School, before moving the shows to Barrington High School and ultimately to Glenbrook North High School in Glenview, where she could seat more than 1,000 people.

"We used to have seven shows and a matinee, just to get in all of the kids," says Mrs. Bruns' son, Richard Eiler of Antioch. "They were just like professional musical theater productions."

Besides her husband and son, Mrs. Bruns is survived by another son, Jack, of Ingleside, and six grandchildren.

Visitation for Mrs. Bruns will take place from 3-9 p.m. today at Glueckert Funeral Home, 1520 N. Arlington Heights Road in Arlington Heights. Interment will be private.