The Brookfield Chamber of Commerce will be hosting the Dancing with the Chamber competition on Saturday, October 1 in the Auditorium at Riverside Brookfield High School. The hope for this event is to bring our community closer together while watching our principal, Héctor Freytas along with Mary Vasquez from Mary’s Morning Mixup, Aaron Peseck from Beach Avenue BBQ, and other local business owners bust a move. 

Freytas, one of the star competitors of Dancing with the Chamber, gave more insight on this idea of unifying our community with this upcoming event.

“The outcome, I would say, is to create fellowship among community members and to bring us closer together so we can build a positive relationship,” Freytas said. “That’s really huge, and I think that that is the essential purpose of it: to bring people together so we can all laugh, so we can all enjoy, so we can be a community.”

Fellowship and bringing the community together is the main purpose for this competition, but Freytas also explained another perk to this event.

“We are getting a $1000 honorarium,” Freytas said. “With that money, I could see us using that to support local programming and anything with student awards, student lunches, and a lot of the stuff I support as a principal: any little gifts or future awards. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there, but everything will definitely go back to the school in some way shape or form.”

The idea for this event came from the Brookfield Chamber of Commerce. Secretary and Treasurer of the Chamber, Amy Weinert had a large role in putting the event together. Weinert has very high expectations for the upcoming event, and shared an idea of what to expect.

“We are hoping for it to be sold out,” Weinert said. “There are 692 seats in the Auditorium and we printed 700 tickets… I gave each of the contestants 60 tickets to sell to friends and family, their customers, their coworkers, and I’m hoping a lot of students come.”

The Brookfield Chamber of Commerce has a bright outlook for this event, and has many hopes for the outcome of this competition.

“I wanted to highlight the nine business owners and Dr. Freytas because I wanted the community to see them not in their normal role–being vulnerable and trying something new and having a silly side,” Weinert said. “It’s just seeing these people in a different way of life, seeing that they’re human and everybody has a personality.”

This event has been planned carefully over a long period of time. The Chamber started to outline the competition way back in 2019.

“In 2019 we had it all set, ready to go. We had worked with the whole school, gotten the whole schedule and… COVID. So, we froze everything. And then as things started opening up, we contacted the school before summer last year and asked if it was a possibility and worked out dates,” Weinert said.

This is not the Brookfield Chamber of Commerce’s first rodeo; the Chamber has done many events before. All of these events are highly focused on promoting local businesses. One accommodation the Chamber provides are welcome bags.

“The bag is a Tischler bag to support Tischlers. All Chamber members or business owners have the opportunity to put whatever they want inside that bag. So, when the new resident moves to town, that bag is full of goodies, information, menus, essential items like pens or note pads, things like that,” Weinert said.

The Brookfield Chamber of Commerce and RBHS hope you come out and support Dr. Freytas and Brookfield small business owners this Saturday.

“This is a community event,” Freytas said. “We are hoping to have a thousand people or so here at RB so we can share similar experiences. People can share those stories and feel good about other things that’s outside the community and inside the community. To really act like a community.”