When the door opens and the lights flick on at Ballet Westside for its Tuesday morning class, there’s a feeling of reunion before they get down to business. Gathering here at the Center for Nonprofits in Rogers, they are all friends, they are all here to learn, grow and strengthen themselves and each other; they all don the classical uniform of leotard and tights. Some are in pointe shoes. And they are all over 50.

At the helm is Marilyn Russell, who guides them with friendly discernment and skill.

Marilyn “enriches our lives so much,” said Marty Milburn, one of the dancers and her friend. “She embodies that ballet is not just for the young. It’s the foundation of everything, dance. It’s not only for the youth, but benefits all bodies.”

Among her most outstanding traits as a teacher, Milburn said, is that Marilyn is a wonderful diagnostician.

“She’ll tell you what to tweak so that you don’t hurt yourself — ballet can be dangerous in that respect,” she said. “Under her, ballet is not dangerous.”

Chris Catt found herself caught up in Russell’s magnetic pull toward dance when she moved to the area from the Pacific Northwest. All the women in Marilyn’s neighborhood are social and loved doing things together. One of them told her about the ballet class.

Marilyn “took me under her wing,” Catt said. “I didn’t know anything, not even first position, I knew nothing.”

It didn’t phase Russell, who said they could start lessons at her house and progress to the community center. Now Catt is dancing three times a week and has progressed to using pointe shoes.

“She’s very encouraging, as are all the ladies in our Tuesday group,” Catt said. “From the get-go she’s had to have the patience of Job with me … I had no idea what it involved.”

When it came to considering pointe shoes, Russell felt strongly that Chris would like the challenge, despite her protests. But she eased her in, reminded her that she can do it and that she was getting stronger, and now she’s hooked.

“I could see that I was gaining endurance,” Catt said. “I can last longer doing things physically — working out in the yard and in other areas of life I stand taller, I walk in a different way, in ways I didn’t think I would.”

Gail Johnston met Marilyn Russell at a yoga class in the Rogers Adult Wellness Center in 2010. The two connected over their shared background in dance and began to dance together in a studio. They did that for a year or more before opening it up to others to create the class that’s since grown.

“No doubt she’s especially passionate about ballet, that’s her life. She loves it and she loves sharing it,” Johnston said. At the time, Russell had retired from teaching, but found that she missed it over that break and wanted to return. “She’s just driven to it, it’s who she is.”

Johnston said Marilyn’s very good at assessing the needs of each person and has just the right personality to teach adults, which can be a tricky thing since each one has a different goal. While one might be open to correction and is always aiming for perfection, some students are there just to have fun and don’t want the pressure.

“She’s good at assessing it,” she said. “Who wants correction and who does not. She (also) chooses the music and the steps. A lot goes into it.”

About once a month or so, just when Gail and the other students begin to feel as if they have the combinations down, Marilyn will arrive with an entirely new set of combinations and music. Then they’re back to feeling as if they don’t have it at all, and that’s the point, Johnston said, to challenge them. To be a ballet dancer is synonymous with liking such a challenge.

Russell’s dedication and passion for ballet rises to the occasion.

“She thinks it, she breathes it,” Johnston said. “She wakes up in the night and creates combinations … She’s an inspiration. Nothing stops her.”

FINDING PEERS

When Marilyn Russell started taking classes and teaching at the Adult Wellness Center in Rogers, being age 50 or over was part of what qualified you to be there. And while she had taught adults before, she taught children for most of her life.

While taking a yoga class at the center, she thought about how nice the studio was and wondered if she could find an empty one to do a ballet workout by herself.

“Another girl, I could tell by the way she moved, she had been a dancer,” Russell said, and asked if she’d be interested in starting a ballet class together. They didn’t know how much interest there might be, but wanted to put out a call to any other adults who wanted to learn. When they did, “we ended up with two beginner classes, three intermediate and a Saturday pointe class.”

Russell’s friend taught Tuesdays and Fridays, while she led the intermediate class and the pointe class for a while.

“I felt like (the interest) was out there, I just needed to find them,” Russell said. “Finding an adult class is really hard for an adult to take a class where there aren’t teenagers in it, where they feel a little intimidated by the younger people. Just to have peers was really nice.”

When it comes to adult students, some need a little convincing.

“Some don’t think they can (do ballet),” she said. But “it’s never too late. If it’s something you’ve always wanted to do, it’s certainly something you should try.”

Occasionally women who entered thinking they want to take ballet will take a class or two and realize that it’s a harder craft than they thought. It’s not for everybody, Russell admits, but she encourages them not to make up their mind after only a class or two. It takes time to figure out what you’re doing, then the affinity for it either comes or it doesn’t.

Jane Aronson, another friend, neighbor and dancer, said that Russell is a teacher who sees all.

“She has eyes in the back of her head and they rotate around,” she said with a laugh. “The smallest of details she sees. She’s a great teacher. She’s kind with her corrections.”

Aronson appreciates the adherence to classical ballet and that Russell stays true to the style, and calls her a “beautiful dancer.”

“When I hear the ladies tell me ‘I hear you in my head,’ that’s very gratifying,” Russell said.

Marilyn first began ballet at age 11, which by typical standards is a “little late,” but progressed quickly enough that she soon assisted her teacher with classes. By high school, she was taking a bus to an elementary school to teach them in the afterschool hours. Around then she joined a civic company in Washington D.C., where she grew up.

“We did some nice performances,” she said. Among them was the debut of “Apollo,” a pinnacle performance seared in her mind since she was told that the great ballet choreographer George Balanchine was in the audience.

Young Marilyn auditioned and was accepted to Boston Conservatory, but her mother encouraged her to go to college instead. She attended the University of Lynchburg, but continued to dance in town. Once she got married and had children, she took a break from the art of ballet.

Marilyn didn’t dance again until her daughter Catherine turned 3. Then the two of them went in search of a school, one that would have a class “for her and a class for me.”

“My mom has always taught me that supporting and caring for other people makes life worth living,” said Catherine Grubbs, CEO of Circle of Life Hospice and Russell’s daughter. “She’s always been compassionate and loving, not just as a mother but as a teacher. She genuinely cares about the people she coaches and teaches in ballet and is an incredible talented professional in that art.

“She helps me be a better person, mother and leader.”

Grubbs said both her parents raised her with the mindset that she could do anything if she put her mind to it, and was never discouraged from a challenge or trying new things.

“She always, if I was interested in trying a new art or getting a master’s degree, she would say ‘You can do that, that’s something you’re capable of doing,’” Grubbs recalled. “That was important to my upbringing.”

Back then, Catherine said, Marilyn taught her a quote she continues to live by — to bloom where you’re planted.

“At points in my life, when I was not sure I was in the right place or doing what my heart wanted me to be doing, I leaned on that, to do the best you can with what you have and where you are,” Grubbs said.

SHE SIMPLY MUST DANCE

As a child herself, Marilyn fell in love with dance immediately.

“I loved the music, the feeling of my body doing these things and being in control of my body,” Russell recalled. She liked figuring out “what I can do and working on things, (like) triple pirouettes that are challenging and being able to do it.”

She loved the structure just as much and the home-away-from home element it gave. That’s something she’s echoed in her experience of teaching, providing structure to kids who didn’t find that at home. Through the years, Russell’s dress code has been strict, as her policy for dancers wearing their hair — always pulled back, off the face and neck.

Looking back on her childhood, Russell realizes now how much her mother, who was a widow and a registered nurse, must have sacrificed for her ballet costume and pointe shoes. She would ride the bus downtown to pick out her shoes, a particular brand from England, which were sold in a tall, large box — ideal for picking out the right size for her feet, which are two different sizes.

Young Marilyn did other things at first, piano at age 5, ice skating, and in school she took choir, but dance ruled it all. Evenings and weekends were for company rehearsals and classes. Her teacher, Elizabeth Gratzer, was from Vienna, Austria, and loved the Viennese Waltz. Gratzer invited her to the Russian Ball at the Russian Embassy where, Russell said, she must have danced. She doesn’t remember that exactly, but a picture from the time has an inscription saying so.

Gratzer “was a stickler for technique as well, and was encouraging,” Russell said. When she took Marilyn to audition for the civic company, she simply told her to wear her prettiest leotard and make her hair pretty. She wouldn’t tell her where they were going to keep the nerves from taking over.

Those memories of performing with the civic company around D.C. are fond ones, where she reveled in classes, observing and teaching.

A GOOD TEACHER

Between her times of being a ballet student and ballet teacher were a few other paths — a couple years as a psychology major in college, working as a clerk/typist for the Maritime Administration at the Department of Commerce and taking on the assorted roles her children needed when they were in school, like teaching competitive roller skating for a time.

Russell didn’t get into teaching kids ballet until she met her husband, C.L. Her own kids were 8 and 10 at the time, and every class was a learning experience.

“I learned I can’t turn my back on them,” she said. Russell picked up dozens of tricks to hold their attention, to keep them present and focused. Soon she had children lining up and looking her in the eye, curtsying as they came in the door and awaiting their turn to hold the flower so they could speak.

“I would always hear the feedback from the families of how good she was and how much kids loved her classes,” daughter Catherine Grubbs said. As the family moved around, “she always found a way to teach and build that community around herself, especially as an adult.”

Through those years, Russell developed her own syllabus as she discovered what year in a child’s training they would be ready for a new skill, based on development, frequency of practice and the moment they picked up greater self discipline.

In Edmond, Okla., she taught nine classes a week, pre-ballet to adults. Then in El Dorado, at South Arkansas Arts Center, Russell led them on to many successes, like dancing with the symphony orchestra. When she left that organization, they named the studio after her. Among her claims to fame, Russell said, is teaching Shannon Miller. The second-most decorated American gymnast took ballet to better learn body placement, among other beneficial traits.

Sometimes, having a reputation for dance in areas that had few dance experts, meant that Russell was asked to step out of her comfort zone, like the time that she did choreography for “Music Man,” and took on the renovation of a dance studio that needed a lot of work.

Her time at the Rogers Wellness Center was marked by performances for Christmas, Halloween and Valentine’s Day, always finding opportunities to dance at the American Legion, the theater in downtown Rogers, Art on the Creeks and nursing homes.

Through Ballet Westside, Russell opens the world of ballet to an older demographic for which stability is an ever more important quality, Milburn said, as they cross into an age where lack of balance can put them at risk for dangerous falls.

“Marilyn fills our life with grace and beauty,” she said. “She’s a consummate choreographer and her simple steps, the beauty of it, is a metaphor for how she lives.

“To dance with someone is to connect with them on a soul level. Marilyn has a beautiful soul.”

These days, if you step into Circle of Life Hospice in Bentonville, it’s Marilyn Russell’s smile that will greet you from the front desk.

“It’s wonderful having her there,” Grubbs said. “She’s that warm demeanor as people come through the door. They’re in a traumatic place, losing a loved one. She’s one of the people there greeting with love and care.”