Sock dancer stays in step with kids

• Reprints

Annie Elmer on stage with the Dirty Sock Funtime Band

The Dirty Sock Funtime Band

Kraft Great Kids series at The Ravinia Festival, 200 Ravinia Park Road, Highland Park

1 p.m. Sunday, June 19

$10 for reserved pavilion seating; free lawn seats (limited to 6 per household)

(847)266-5100 or www.ravinia.org

Article Extras

Updated: June 17, 2011 9:31AM

Morton Grove native Annie Elmer is so excited about performing at Ravinia next weekend, she plans to change her socks and put on a new pair of multi-colored go-go boots.

Dancer extraordinaire for The Dirty Sock Funtime Band, a Nick Jr. music video fav for the toddler set on “Jack’s Big Music Show,” Elmer’s long-time love of performing arts and dance promises to get kids between the ages of 2 to 7 bopping to the band’s “funadelic” rock and roll music when they perform at 1 p.m. Sunday, June 19 at The Ravinia Festival in Highland Park.

“My mother put me in dance classes at 10 years old because I was always dancing around,” said Elmer. “It’s the best thing she ever did because I’ve never stopped dancing.”

Family gathering

Her mother, Joan, and stepfather, Sid Schiffman, who still live in Morton Grove, will join her next week along with her 4-year-old niece, Tess, who first saw the band at Ravinia at “6 weeks old wrapped in my brother’s arms,” along with 25 cousins from Deerfield, Arlington Heights, Glenview, Glen Ellyn and Geneva, and a Maine East High School friend from Lake Forest and a University of Illinois college roommate from Chicago.

After earning a degree in dance, Elmer danced professionally. Among her credits are a Def Leppard video, “Hysteria,” commercial work in film and for Rosanna Gamson and Keely Garfield’s Sinister Slapstick.

She took a break when she had her son, Christopher, now 17.

Elmer then taught “mommy and me” movement classes then joined Kid’s Creative, an afterschool children’s music and theater program in New York City public schools, as assistant to Mike Messer, lead singer of The Dirty Sock Funtime Band.

Although her full-time job is organizing special events for the Fashion Institute of Technology, she joined the band seven years ago and has performed at more than 250 gigs. The music stems from the work of Kids Creative, founded by brothers Stephen and Adam Jacobs.

“Mike, Stephen and Adam brushed up the kids’ lyrics, put music to it and you can’t help to dance to this music,” Elmer said. “One of our songs, ‘Donut Brain Aliens,’ right when the song opens up, we teach this dance and get the whole crowd moving. I’m on stage, shouting into the mic, and then I’m in the audience with the kids.”

Elmer joins singer Messer, and Stephen Jacobs, who along with Bill “Billy Z” Phillips, alternate lead and bass guitar, Adam “Mr. Clown” Jacobs, who wears a big wig, sunglasses and lavender leisure suits, sings and dances along with the crowd, with drummer Sean “Seannie D” Dixon.

Socks rock kids

“We’ve based our show on the idea of taking many of the elements you would find in a big arena rock show — a flashy lead guitarist, a front-man seriously committed to leaping gyrations, a drummer who continuously puts on a one-man show,” said Messer, “all performing the entire gamut from raucous rock songs to quiet acoustic ballads, enhanced, of course, with what we’re famous for: really clever lyrics and plenty of audience participation. Energy-wise, the level is high, but everything is presented in a child-appropriate context.”

According to Elmer, it’s all pure, clean fun for kids that is safe and enjoyable, even for parents.

“It’s funadelic, rock and roll with a great beat, like toddlers and little kids who have an inside rhythm,” said Elmer, who uses a little bit of modern dance and jazz in the performance. “No matter how old they are, they bop up and down and clap their hands because it’s fun music. The kids love the beat in the music and the lyrics are really funny and quite clever so the parents laugh at the lyrics. Then, they’re dancing and singing with their kids. The parents are doing it as much as the kids are.

“Many times, I’ll dance with the mom as well as her child,” Elmer said.

Known for her wildly colorful outfits and mix-matched, vinyl go-go boots, Elmer said the band’s funny name puzzles some show goers.

“One time, this 2-year-old’s mom said, ‘she needs to see if your socks are dirty,’” recalls Elmer. “I took off my boots, with one pink and one yellow sock on and she saw they weren’t dirty but soaked through. And no, she did not smell them!”

The band has released three CDs, most recently the Sock-A-Delic CD and The Dirty Sock Funtime Band DVD, which are now being promoted nationally. The band is planning to release an e-book in September based on their song “Treasure,” which is on both the Sock-A-Delic CD and the DVD. An all-new Dirty Sock Funtime Band CD will be released in November.

“You can do whatever you want, as long as it’s safe, good clean fun,” Elmer said of the band’s motto. “That’s why it’s pure because kids are pure. I believe that with 125 percent of my heart. A toddler who is bobbing is where it all gets started and God bless my mom for recognizing that in me.”

For more information on the band, visit www.dirtysockfuntimeband.com