About the Broadway Dreams Foundation:
“The Broadway Dreams Foundation is the premiere performing arts training program. With a faculty made up of todays biggest Broadway stars, casting directors, choreographers and agents dedicated to giving back to the theatrical community, we provide invaluable training to anyone who aspires to a career in musical theater.”
Source: www.mybroadwaydreams.com

Teen Solo Division:

1st Place – Tanner Pflueger – Pride (In The Name Of Love) – Lyrical – Nebraska Dance

Teen Mr. Showbiz:

Mr. Showbiz – Tanner Pflueger – Nebraska Dance

For a full list of the results look here, Tanner also participated with various ensembles with colleagues from Nebraska Dance.

About Showbiz:

• A respected leader in the industry for over 20 years.
• A higher level of competition for intermediate to advanced students.
• Expanded locations covering even more areas of the USA.

The competition for the Omaha, NE region was held between February 12-14 with this schedule.

Here are 2 videos and a selection of 24 pictures of his solo performances.

Please don’t post these anywhere on the internet (ex youtube, facebook), this media is licensed for this site.

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Teen Solo Division – 1st Place – Tanner Pflueger – Pride (In The Name Of Love) – Lyrical – Nebraska Dance
For those of you who also felt in love  with the song from his performance, it’s John Legend – Pride (In The Name Of Love), from the album “Yes We Can: Voices Of A Grassroots Movement”.

Tanner Pflueger – Tap

On Saturday 26th September 2009, Tanner’s love affair with boxing gloves and ballet shoes came to an end at the Victoria Palace Theatre in London, amidst an atmosphere that can only be described as electric, no… Supercharged, that’s more like it! This show was all about Tanner, and the capacity crowd at the theatre was all there to ensure he received the best send off possible. It’s not rare for a Billy to receive a standing ovation at the end of the show, and I am sure Tanner has lost count of just how many he has received. However I am pretty sure most actors even on a final night’s performance are unable to say that they received three standing ovations in one show! Yes that’s right THREE!

The first of which came after “Angry Dance”, where Tanner has always stood out from the crowd. He is aggressive, jerky, full of teen angst and really conveys Billy’s emotions so well. It’s hard to believe that this is the same boy who performs the smooth and elegant “dream ballet” scene a little later in the show. In contrast the whole styles of dance in these two routines are completely different, but this is what makes Tanner a professional at what he does. You cannot see a weakness in any dance he performs, he simply embraces the opportunity to dance and gives it his all. I guess it is a natural born talent of his.

I don’t think any other Billy will be able to re-create the power Tanner bought to “dream ballet”, everything about it is always so perfect, the movement, the posture and the flow of the routine is simply beautiful! Well it opened my eyes to ballet, as did his “electricity” routine which scored him his second standing ovation of the night. With such an angelic voice and a powerful ballet routine, Tanner’s performance during this piece is fantastic and absolutely faultless!

By now emotions are running high, though nothing could prepare the audience for the closing scene, which on any other night is emotional enough in its own right. In this scene Billy is leaving for London, when his best friend Michael comes after him, calling him back to say goodbye. Billy returns the kiss Michael gave him from earlier in the show before saying goodbye. Billy walks away down the aisle of the theatre as a glum faced Michael can only stand and watch, knowing his best friend will soon be miles from home. Remember this was set in a time before MSN messenger and text messaging. Moving away was just that… like losing a friend for good.

George Maycock was in the role of Michael at this evening’s show, and much like, Tanner has been with the show sometime. As the character’s said their goodbyes, you could see George was visibly upset. All of a sudden the scene which he had acted out one hundred times before, had become his very own personal reality. This was no longer Michael saying goodbye to Billy. This was George saying goodbye to Tanner, and if you could see the hurt in George’s eyes, it could bring a grown man to tears, and trust me on this one… it did. What can I say? Hugely emotional and so real. Though George can rest assured that he gave Tanner the best possible send off with what was simply the best performance I have ever seen from a Michael at this show.

So what is it about Tanner that makes him so special in my eyes? After all lots of people leave shows every year, and they don’t all get write ups! Well, Tanner has been very influential, through bringing dance to life and making it more accessible to me. I guess he changed what I saw as a two dimensional series of movements into a three dimensional, emotional and expressive piece of art. He has motivated me to expand my horizons within my own actors training, and experiment with dance. That is something I will forever be grateful for. You meet lots of new people in life, though very few leave an imprint in your character like Tanner has for me. That is why I hold him in such high regard and always will.

I guess as I finalize this write up Tanner is probably enjoying his return to relative normality and the opportunity to be back around friends and family in Nebraska. But when you become a Billy, you have two families. The first is back at home, your mum, dad, brothers and sisters. The second is a much larger family, it’s the cast and fans of the show. Sure it’s not the same as a real family but it is a loving one all the same! So for the extended Billy Elliot family, another Billy has left the nest and flown into the sunset, but the memories of Tanner and his showmanship will stay with us for a long time to come.

Thank you Tanner!

Written by Gareth Varndell, a longtime fan of the Billy Elliot show. His blog about West End Theatre can be reached here. On the same blog, there are various posts about Tanner Pflueger, here are some quick links:
- Goodbye Tanner (part 1)
- Goodbye Tanner (part 2)

Before the start of the show, Stephen Daldry took the stage and delivered this short but very emotional speech:

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is Stephen Daldry, I’m the director of Billy Elliot.

Tonight I wanted to welcome you here this evening personally because tonight is a very special and dare I say it, very emotional night for us because we are saying goodbye to one of our Billys.

His name is Tanner. Tanner’s been performing the title role of Billy Elliot for over a year here in London. I first met him over two years ago when I was auditioning for the Broadway production of Billy Elliot, in fact pinched him for London but he is one of the only two boys who ever played the show both here and on Broadway, because he went back earlier this year and played it on Broadway for some time and then came back to London.

He is from Norfolk, but that’s Norfolk from Nebraska, and I’d say that I’m sure you can imagine the extraordinary commitment his parents, and whole family have made to come to England and relocate them to New York and then come back to London and of course his whole family here tonight Jan, Marty and his wonderful grandmother and I thank you.

I know Tanner will be incredibly embarrassed because he’s probably listening to backstage, but Tanner is an extraordinary child, he’s incredibly gifted but he’s very, very much beloved, not just by this company but also by the company in New York. And I think everybody wanted to say a very special goodbye to him tonight, for this extraordinary child.

I’m getting emotional. We all wanted to thank his parents for their extraordinary commitment and love, not just to Tanner but their commitment to the show, to wish them great speed and safe flight home in the next couple of days.

Thank you for your son, he is an extraordinary boy, we wish him well, I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of him, he is wonderful and thank you very much for being here.

Have a great night.”

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I just want to thank Tanner and his dad for tonight, for taking the time to spend some minutes with the fans after the show. All the Billys were there and they had a farewell party inside, things got quite emotional. We understand what it meant for Tanner to leave that, if only for a couple of minutes, and spend it taking pictures or giving autographs.

I’ll keep the site updated.

We, the fans of Tanner, wish him all the best in the future, we will miss you. This is only the beginning!

This site will stay up forever, and I take the oportunity to ask anyone who wishes to post materials about Tanner to contact me. I personally, will be there and I will take pictures.

Tanner’s brief Broadway run ended with last Saturday’s matinee, and he’ll return to Nebraska for a week after Sunday’s post-show party. Then it’s back to London where he will continue his year-long contract in the same role through September.

Jbara, who won the featured actor Tony for his adult role in Billy Elliott, didn’t just win the hearts of the Pflueger family. In addition to listing Tanner and several others whose names would have gone unmentioned, he explained why he dragged his wife on stage: to thank her for being a single parent for the past year while he performed on Broadway.

The three-hour program showcased not only the nominated original musicals and revivals, but squeezed in production numbers from such touring shows as Jersey Boys, the Frankie Valli musical that earlier put former Omahan John Young in the Tony spotlight.

For raw emotion, there was Karen Olivo, honored as Anita in the revival of West Side Story.

But the Pflueger family enjoyed the rather stunned response of the three original Billy Elliots when they accepted their joint award for leading actor in a musical. After a “wow” or two, David Alvarez, Kiri Kulish and Trent Kowalik managed the usual “thank yous” for their moms, dads and siblings, including, in ascending order, one, two and three sisters.

Kowalik got the chance on stage to show us the power of the title role with the Elton John score backing his high-energy performance. And it gave viewers an idea of why three teen-agers take turns.

Their Nebraska replacement only performed a half-dozen times over three weeks.
“They’ll have four Billies in London,” Marty Pflueger noted, to give each lad a full week off from time to time.”

He’ll take time off from his steel mill job to fly there with Tanner next week.

Warren Francke
Source:  TheReader

Tanner snagged the title role in a London musical, “Billy Elliot.” Based on a 2000 movie, with music by Elton John, it’s the story of a British boy from a coal-mining family who trades boxing gloves for ballet shoes.

Tanner opens Sept. 29 at the Victoria Palace Theatre in the West End, London’s equivalent to Broadway.

“It’s so hard to find boys capable of doing this role,” said Jessica Ronane, London casting director of “Billy Elliot.” “They’re like gold dust.”

The role requires difficult ballet and tap steps, gymnastics and a British dialect, “an awful lot to learn at that age,” said Nora Brennan, the New York casting director who found Tanner in a nationwide search.

Tanner was up for it, his teachers say. He has a strong work ethic, a perfectionist nature and the ability to pick things up quickly.

The story of how Tanner blossomed as a dancer, and how London found him, beats fantastic odds.

It starts with a shy kid who clung to his mother’s hand at his first dance lesson six years ago.

He’s the second son of Marty Pflueger, a steel machinist, and wife Jan, a nurse. Neither is particularly musical, but Tanner took to piano, singing and saxophone along with gymnastics.

“He had a tape recorder he would sing and dance to when he was a toddler,” his mother said.

At age 6, Tanner went to cousin Brandi Roeber’s dance recital. Soon after, he had a surprise for her.

“He’d made up his own dance to the song I had danced to,” said Roeber, a pediatric dentist in Omaha. “He watched the recital tape over and over to learn.”

Soon after, he started lessons in Wisner, Neb.

“At first I was scared, and I didn’t want to do it,” Tanner said recently from London. “But I finally started to enjoy it, and I let go of Mom’s hand.”

Soon he was under the wing of tap teacher Kathy Morrison. When a job opened at Nebraska Dance in Omaha, Morrison took it. Her star pupil followed her.

Thus began four years of commuting, three times a week, 100 miles one way.

“We were willing to make that sacrifice because he loved it,” Jan Pflueger said. “When he got into the car, he’d eat a packed lunch and start his homework. He and his dad would listen to ‘Jeopardy’ on the radio. We did a lot of talking, too, bonding time.”

At Nebraska Dance, Tricia Lovejoy, Sally Banghart and Sarah Koenig taught Tanner ballet, skills that turned out to be key in landing the role. From Lovejoy, Tanner said, he learned the importance of ballet as the basis of all dance.

“And she was the first person to get me to wear tights. Tights aren’t one of the first things I’d choose to put on.”

Tanner drew attention at the 2007 Youth American Grand Prix, an annual ballet competition known around the world. Soon after, Brennan called Nebraska Dance to ask if he’d like to audition for “Billy Elliot.”

After four rounds of auditions over 14 months, Tanner was offered the role in early May.

“That first audition, I remember very distinctly just being blown away by him,” Brennan said. “He was a phenomenal tapper, and he had a really high level of skill — a beautiful, lyrical, well-rounded dancer. He’s sort of a quiet boy, but he’s amazing.”

The London offer brought a dilemma: Should his parents let him go? Tanner had never been away from them for longer than a weekend with nearby grandparents.

Jan Pflueger, who admitted shedding more than a few tears of both pride and concern, said it was a tough decision.

“He told me, ‘Mom, you can’t keep me home just ’cause you’re gonna miss me. You have to give me a very good reason.’

“I didn’t have a good reason.”

Tanner’s parents prayed about it, checked out the supervised living arrangements and tutoring in London, and decided that it was the chance of a lifetime.

“This wasn’t something we went looking for or were pursuing for him,” his mother said. “God was telling us we needed to give him that chance.”

Since Tanner arrived in London on June 13, his parents have visited monthly. He calls his mom two or three times a day, starting at 3 a.m. — which is 9 a.m. in London.

“My wife said I’d have to take that first call,” Marty Pflueger said, laughing. “But I have yet to. She grabs the phone immediately.”

Tanner says he’s having the time of his life. He’ll perform at least through May — unless a dreaded growth spurt or homesickness arrives first.

He does miss his family members. “It’s hard not being with them, but I just really enjoy it,” he said of performing.

“I’ve always dreamed of being a pro dancer. I sorta am right now, and I just want to keep it going as I get older. They say I’m doing well, and I’ll be completely ready for my opening night.”

His parents and grandmother will be in the audience Monday to see it.

Once nervous that he’d be sick to his stomach before going on, Tanner now loves to perform.

“It’s just the music, and letting go, and forgetting about everything else. And just having fun.”

Source: Omaha World Herald

Source: 5 news / many thanks to sleepylins from Billy Elliot the Forum.