What do they offer? 

Stapleton School of the Performing Arts has three divisions: ballet, theatre arts, and mind, body and spirit. The school operates as a nonprofit organization and currently has an enrollment of 525 children, teens, and adults. 

Over 50 classes a week are offered in the ballet school during the academic year, along with summer workshops. The ballet division puts on two full length productions each year, the Nutcracker coming up this weekend and a spring ballet performance.

The youngest children begin with creative movement when they are 2 1/2 to 4 years old and pre-ballet at ages 5 to 7. Classic ballet is taught from ages 8 to 11, and dancers progress to advanced ballet from ages 12 to 18. In addition, the school offers adult ballet classes.

At age nine or older, students who choose to make dance the focus of their extra curricular activities can join the Stapleton Youth Company. Currently, there are eighty dedicated members, all of whom take multiple weekly classes. Some have gone on to professional careers in dance.

Many Marin students interested in gymnastics, ballroom dance, ice skating, or musical theater have come to Stapleton School to take beginning ballet for teens, realizing that ballet is a great foundation for other endeavors.

The school operates in four sessions (quarters) on an academic calendar, September through June. Summer workshops include Broadway jazz, contemporary ballet, and musical theater.

Artistic Director/Founder Virginia Stapleton designed the curriculum and hones it each year. Though a dress code is enforced, Stapleton emphasizes that the primary goal of the school is to instill a love of dance while offering professional instruction. She has created a non-competitive atmosphere, which is supportive and encouraging, rather than one based on the harsh discipline she encountered when she was a ballet student herself.

The Theatre Arts Division came about primarily because of Executive Director Sharon Burns. After sixteen years of service to the town of San Anselmo as recreation supervisor, Burns, the group's executive producer, took a permanent position in 2006 with the Stapleton School of the Performing Arts.

The San Anselmo Town Players had been part of the San Anselmo Recreation Department from 2001-2006. The advisory board of the group made the difficult decision to ensure its survival by finding a new home with Stapleton Theatre Company and the new organization combines the leadership and administrative talent of the old Town Players with the performing tradition and reputation of the Stapleton School.  

The Theatre Arts division teaches voice, acting, and dance. They do three shows a year. This holiday season, they are presenting A Christmas Carol, the musical, from Dec. 16-19 at the Drake High School Little Theatre. See the website for more details.

Mind, Body and Spirit, the newest division, offers classes in pilates, yoga, Tai Chi/QiGong, and Jazzercise -- all taught by experts in the various fields.   

Who are they? 

Virginia Stapleton was a professional dancer, who first studied at San Francisco Ballet School, then performed and toured with the San Francisco Ballet Company in the 1960s. She left the company, got married, had three children, and settled in San Anselmo.

During that time, she switched her focus from performing to teaching and eventually developed a dance program for San Anselmo Recreation Department.  She was also a pre-school teacher. She founded the Stapleton School of the Performing Arts in 1988 as a nonprofit school and currently resides in Fairfax.  

How long have they been here?

In 1988, classes were first offered at Drake High School in Devonshire Hall. Now the school has two buildings, the primary studio at 118 Greenfield Ave. and an annex studio at 2240 Fourth St., on the San Anselmo/San Rafael border, which is used almost exclusively for younger children (2 1/2 to 7 year olds.)

Why are they business of the week?  

This weekend, Stapleton School of the Performing Arts will perform the Nutcracker, which many Marinites feel marks the beginning of the holiday season.

The shows are at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 4 and 5, at the Civic Center's Memorial Auditorium in San Rafael, with photo opportunitues in the lobby after the 1 p.m. shows to include Clara and the Sugar Plum Fairy. Ticket prices are $30 for adults and $18 for students and seniors.

From what Stapleton calls "the primitive version," when the ballet was first presented at Drake High School Little Theater in 1989, the production has now grown to two full casts with a total of 228 performers in a huge auditorium. Her best friend makes the costumes, and she and her son built the sets.

Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite is performed by the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra (recorded).  Stapleton choreographs the entire ballet as the traditional Nutcracker; the artistic vision is hers. She has tried to make it engaging by keeping the magical aspects, such as the disappearing illusion in the Arabian scene and the fantastic Christmas tree which grows to 50' tall and 30'wide ensuring the inevitable gasp from the audience. 

The school is inclusive in the sense that any dancer age six or older can be in the show. There are auditions for the leading roles and the principals are all students. Casting and rehearsals start in September. 

Stapleton designs and sketches the costumes herself, first in watercolor, and they are made by volunteers. Regina Gray, a tutu-maker from San Anselmo, even attended a tutu tutorial in Los Angeles. Patricia Perez, who was a dancer at San Francisco Ballet, and a guest artist in last year's Swan Lake (she also is a guest teacher) has said the costumes at Stapleton rival what she was given to wear on stage when she was a professional dancer. 

Set designer Nick Cann is a full-time artist who lives in Napa. Though he attended high school with Stapleton, they had not seen each other in many years. When he was shopping for art supplies on Greenfield Avenue, he saw Stapleton's sign and thought could it be? It was.

Cann had worked as a set illustrator for MGM studios and freelanced as a graphic designer in Los Angeles for many years, so his collaboration with Stapleton has created a new and sophisticated imagery to make the Nutcracker dream fantasy come alive.  

Two shows of the Stapleton Nutcracker will be performed this year for over 3,000 people as part of Dance Reach, an outreach program to give people who would not have the opportunity otherwise to see ballet (school groups, civic groups, seniors) for as little as $5. The school also donates Nutcracker tickets, participates in Drake's Pirate Breakfast, and supports the local schools.

Exective Director Sharon Burns, who lives in Nicasio, said, "As a nonprofit, we want to  make our performances available to as many people as possible." Burns said that it is Virginia Stapleton's goal to build a real sense of a community. The school funds its own scholarships and Burns is proud that they have never turned away a single person due to the inability to pay.