This entire production owes its existence to Carol Petersen, who started teaching ballet in her home 36 years ago and eventually moved to a full-blown studio at the former Serra School site in Sunnyvale. Her annual recital caps off a year of choreography and shinsplints and costume design, and her expansive themes always capture the imaginations of her young students. This year, it was Mardi Gras and featured floats of dancers parading across the stage.

But this recital was the last of its kind. Petersen, 63, is retiring from teaching and selling her studio to move to Lake Tahoe with her new husband. In her wake, she's leaving behind scores of dancers and parents who wish her well, but will miss her empathetic, caring approach to teaching.

Each year, Petersen has taught several hundred students, some who attend the French-American and Montessori schools that are also located in the same complex. Once she announced her retirement, she started hearing from students, both current and past, who were hard hit at the news. "One mother even called me and said, 'I never thought you would retire!'" Petersen says. "In a way, the adult classes took it the hardest. They all want to make sure that I'm not going to teach after I leave. If they can't have me, no one can have me."

Petersen initially started teaching ballet in the family room of her house just down the street from Meyerholz Elementary School in 1968, when the youngest of her three children, Diane, was 3 years old. "One of the neighbors wanted to have the girls do dance, but a lot of places had girls doing suggestive moves and wearing suggestive costumes. I wanted it where little girls were little girls," she says. Once she moved her furniture, there was plenty of room, so she started out teaching ballet to kindergarten and first-grade students.

"I had studied ballet all my life," Petersen says. She grew up in Concord and took dance at Diablo Valley College, but got married almost immediately after she finished school. Teaching gave her the opportunity to indulge her love of dance, though diversifying her offerings with tap and baton classes soon proved overwhelming. "With those experiences, I really thought ballet was the best," she says. "The students don't have to change shoes."

In the early years, she was learning along with her students. Petersen initially had each dancer's mother make costumes for the recitals. "But then, I would answer the phone and hear sobbing," she says. She then turned to catalogs. This year alone she used 19 different sources. And if the specific idea she had for a costume wasn't available in a pre-made form, she would have one parent make them all for one class.

It's never been difficult for her to find such assistance. Since many of her first students were friends with her children, she already knew their parents. One neighbor, Kathy Tani, has been helping craft scenery and pitching in backstage since 1971, even though her children no longer take dance from Petersen. Others take care of sets and coordinating the master CD for the performance.

Another longtime parent, Mary Ann Kurtz, works in desktop publishing and has been producing the programs for Petersen's recitals for five years. Her 11-year-old daughter, Lauren, has been dancing with Petersen since she was 3. Lauren's older sister had taken classes from Petersen at a young age as well. "Carol has known Lauren since I was bringing her in as a baby," Kurtz says. "Her performances have always been professional, and it's great to give them early exposure to what that's like."

Unique recitals have always been part of Petersen's forte. This year, the court jesters were escorting each individually produced and painted float from the wings to the stage, and young dancers dressed like dragons scooted out on stage on skateboards. This entire theme stemmed from Petersen's trip to New Orleans. "Mardi Gras is so happy and joyful, and I wanted the kids to remember this recital," she says. Every year, she comes up with a story and choreographs a series of different dances for each class based on the theme.

She really hasn't come far from the first recital, at which her daughter dressed as an elf. Her recitals have ranged from a night stuck in a shopping mall to exploring a grandmother's attic to the various ports Petersen saw on an Alaskan cruise. While her students would clamor to know the recital theme before she announced it midway through the school year, some started to pick up on clues. "They would always try to get it out of me," she says, "but some would start asking me about the vacations I'd been taking!"

The elaborate recital theme every year is about the only thing that's stayed the same in Petersen's teaching. She eventually expanded her age range to high school and adult dancers and moved her classes from her family room to her garage, where she installed hardwood floors and mirrors. While there, she kept her studio restricted to referred students, keeping her dance family small yet intimate. "Mothers would tell me that they couldn't get their kids out of bed for regular school except on ballet days. They were afraid they'd wake up and find their kids on my doorstep," Petersen says. Teaching often meant being a second parent, enforcing timeouts when students misbehaved. But Petersen says it was definitely worth it.

"These 3-year-olds would go see The Nutcracker and come back to say, 'I saw the Sugar Plum Fairy do an arabesque—just like me!'" she says. "I know these girls like I know my own children. That's when it feels like I've done my job."

But her student base expanded when she moved to her full-blown studio in Sunnyvale. Petersen's daughter Diane—the same one Petersen taught as a youngster—had bought her own studio, but was moving to Windsor with her family. Petersen took over her daughter's studio and opened the Carol Petersen School of Ballet, but she was a bit hesitant when interested dancers began calling who hadn't heard of her through a friend. "My daughter had to say, 'Mom, the phone-book people like to dance, too,'" Petersen says.

Mary Ann Kurtz was one of those who found Petersen through the phone book. "In the early 1990s, I was looking for someone local, and her studio isn't far from my home," she says. But she's happy she made the choice she did. "A lot of other classical ballet teachers just make their students nervous, but Carol is so friendly and warm. She changed the way [Kurtz's daughters] carry themselves and gave them poise," she says. "She demanded more of them as they got older, but she was so patient when they were young."

Kurtz's daughter Lauren is planning to continue her dance training despite Petersen's departure because by her former teacher's calendar, she's finally old enough to dance on pointe shoes. Petersen always required that dancers be at least in the sixth grade and have two consecutive years of ballet training before they could go on pointe, even if they'd danced with her before. "With pointe shoes, it's like starting over, so we start out with five to ten minute increments at the barre. It's like the scales on the piano," Petersen says. One former student came back to Petersen after graduating from Santa Clara University because she wanted her pointe shoes, but the young woman still had to put in her two years.

This strict teaching style has managed to garner a loyal following of dancers. "She's been doing this for a really long time, but I'm going to miss her. A lot of people are going to miss her," Lauren says. "She has good ideas for making stuff fun." After her last recital on June 4, Petersen was deluged with flowers, posters and a book that many of her dancers signed, wishing her well in Lake Tahoe.

Petersen and her first husband divorced about 11 years ago, but for the last seven, she had been dating Michael Galbraith, a contractor in Sebastopol. The two had developed a pattern of visits, but decided to get married after fixing up their dream home near the Heavenly Lake Tahoe resort. "There's a view in every room," Petersen says. The two married on May 1 in her daughter's backyard in Windsor, and Galbraith served as a court jester in Petersen's final performance.

Also performing in the recital was Anne-Lorraine Bahi, the French-trained dancer who bought Petersen's studio. Bahi has since renamed the school—the Harmony Dance Center—and is offering tap, jazz and hip-hop classes in addition to ballet during the summer and in a yet-to-be-determined fall schedule. She met Petersen's students in their last week of class for the year, and a good number plan to continue with Bahi. "I'm very happy I did it," she says. "We met in March, and I bought the studio in June, so we had time to get to know each other. We have the same wedding anniversary, and we really are alike."

Bahi became aware that Petersen was selling her studio through her three children, who attend the nearby French-American school. "She was in one of my kids' classrooms, so I went to see her," Bahi says. With a company that's always looking for space to rent, and a teaching schedule that has her traveling to Los Gatos and the Cupertino Sports Center, among other places, Bahi was enthusiastic about having one solid studio. Her interest also solved one of the dilemmas that Petersen was having. Petersen says the combined stresses of selling her home and the studio, preparing for her wedding and her recital and getting her Lake Tahoe home ready caused her body to develop shingles this spring.

But, as Petersen says, "when the curtain came down at 9:15, I was retired." While she is entertaining thoughts of teaching dance at a local community college up at Lake Tahoe, she has no plans to own another studio.

To pay a final tribute to the end of an era, her daughter and first student, Diane, brought things full circle. She slipped into the pointe shoes that she had stopped using four years ago to dance in her mother's final recital.

For more information on the Harmony Dance Center, visit www. harmonydancecenter.com.