How CPYB brings ballet from a little red barn in Pennsylvania to stages worldwide

Carlisle is a small city of fewer than 20,000 residents. But it has had an outsize effect on the ballet world.

The artistic director of the New York City Ballet, Jonathan Stafford, grew up there and studied at the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet. So did Darla Hoover, the chair of its School of American Ballet.

Several dancers in the top companies across the United States grew up in or near Carlisle and got their start at CPYB, including Ashley Bouder at New York City Ballet, Jeffrey and Lia Cirio at Boston Ballet, Leta Biasucci at Pacific Northwest Ballet, and Julia Rowe at San Francisco Ballet.

One of Stafford’s sisters, Abi, is a former New York City Ballet principal dancer, and his other sister, Melissa, is the chief artistic officer of the ballet division of Philadelphia’s Rock School for Dance Education.

Noelani Pantastico, another alum, spent many years as a principal dancer at Pacific Northwest Ballet, with some years in between at Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo in Monaco.

This spring, she returned to school as artistic director. It’s very much a full-circle moment.

“I’m renting my brother’s house. There’s my backyard, and then there’s some rowhouses, and my dad lives right behind us. And my mom still lives in the same house that I grew up in, in Carlisle.”

Pantastico, 43, who goes by Noe (rhymes with Joey), was born in Hawaii and was one of six children. She is married to choreographer Bruno Roque. Her father died when she was very young and her mother remarried when she was about 3. Her stepfather, who she calls her dad, was in the military, which took the family all over the country.

She started ballet in New Hampshire with a teacher who thought she had talent. When the teacher heard the family was moving to Pennsylvania, she recommended CPYB.

“My dad had to commute a couple hours every day. But we set up the family in Carlisle, like five minutes from the studio. Looking back... it was like a pot of gold. As a kid, I didn’t realize it at the time.”

She studied at CPYB for about six years before getting an apprenticeship at Pacific Northwest Ballet.

She retired from that company in 2022, after a last dance as Juliet in Romeo & Juliet. She was also artistic director of Seattle Dance Collective, a company she founded.

The late Marcia Dale Weary started CPYB in 1955 at just 19 years old. She had discovered a little too late that ballet was her calling. So while she would not become a dancer herself, she was determined to train children the way she wished she had been trained. She opened the school in Carlisle’s Band Hall.

Two years later, she spotted a little red barn for sale, and decided it would make a good studio. She and her sister, Sandra Lee Weary, bought the barn and the house around the corner, where Sandra still lives.

Weary’s way of teaching was the magic touch that turned generations of children into professional dancers.

“We all used to joke around that there was something in the water,” Pantastico said. “At the barn, there was this water fountain. ... In between classes, we’d all line up.”

“There’s just something there that you can’t explain,” she said of the barn, “something supernatural.”

CPYB later expanded to a former warehouse.

Between the barn and the warehouse, CPYB has 12 studios, which makes it one of the country’s larger schools in terms of dancing space. The students get several performing opportunities each year in Balanchine work and new choreography.

Pantastico said she’s planning only small changes during her tenure.

“Why change a good thing?” she said. “I think if anything, the school just needs enhancements to take it into the future. That just means everything is going to be maintained the way it has been operating, in terms of the syllabus and the structure that Marcia has built so beautifully.”

So beautifully that she can spot a professional dancer who trained at CPYB.

“She has this Marcia port de bras that they’re taught at a very young age and it’s a combination that’s very simple. But those head positions and arm positions — you see all throughout the syllabus. ... You can really spot a CPYB kid just because of the epaulment.”

Pantastico came to CPYB at 11, talented but behind.

“I felt like I was very lucky when I came in,” she said, “because I kind of inserted into that generation. I had a lot of catching up to do when I got to the school. I remember Abi Stafford was 8 years old and in pointe shoes. That drove me. I wanted to catch up.”

At home, it was a different story.

“I remember my family had a real hard time with this because the schedule for an 11-year-old was pretty intense. You know, three and a half hours a day, and then Saturday’s kind of all day. So it was a real big adjustment and kind of a fight.”

In Weary’s day and still in Pantastico’s, if you’re in the school, you’re in class, whether or not you are registered for that class.

Along with her administrative responsibilities, Pantastico also teaches.

She has already spotted a few students who could make their marks on the ballet world.

“Right now there’s probably four or five I can count on my hand that I think if they want to continue with it, they could have very successful careers,” she said. They are ages 13 to 17, both girls and boys.

”I don’t know what the future holds for them. We just can do our best and give them things to dance that will [hone their skills] and hopefully teach them good behaviors, that will make sure that when they do enter the dance world, they’ll be successful.”