Take A Look At Why We Love Lincoln Park!

Have you ever wondered why we’re located where we are? What makes this location so magical for us? We’re here to share why we twirl in Lincoln Park and how this special location came to be! From 2023 to now, we’d like to share the story of Tutu School Lincoln Park and the amazing journey we’ve been on so far at our location. Throughout our short time in the neighborhood, we’ve been able to achieve so many incredible milestones, as well as get to know several other wonderful businesses in the area!

What truly makes our part of Chicago shine is neighbors! We wouldn’t love our location as much as we do if it wasn’t for our fabulous friends running their businesses all around us. We can’t highlight our studio locations without highlighting some of our favorite places in the area as well, so follow below to learn our story as well as their histories too! 

The Magic Of Our Studio

Established in 2017, Genevieve Weeks, Founder and CEO of Tutu School opened up our first Chicago location in Roscoe Village. However, after 6 years, she decided it was time to expand our Chicago area locations and looked for a new home for a second school for Illinois in 2023. 

Searching for another Chicago location wasn’t easy, wanting to make sure we could have enough reach to families and be accessible, while also not competing with the other incredible dance studios already located within the city. It wasn’t until Genevieve found a small retail space in Lincoln Park that everything fell into place. For a moment, we weren’t sure this would be our new second home for Tutu School in Chicago, but with how welcoming everyone was and the proximity to so many amazing schools, we knew it was the perfect place to expand. With the knowledge of opening up Tutu School Roscoe Village and a much larger Tutu Team for support, the process of opening up Tutu School Lincoln Park felt smooth and cohesive and before we knew it, our doors were open on October 1st, 2023 with a strong 60 students to start!

Thanks to all of our amazing Tutu School community, we’ve been able to leap through 2 years and counting through many ups and downs, changes and new opportunities, all in the name of making sure ballet is for everyone. We’ve welcomed dancers from all across the city to explore our various storytime adventures and expand their knowledge of dance through our incredible and specially curated curriculum. Whether hosting special events and pods for local schools and caregiver groups, or twirling away at fairs and partnerships, we make sure the dancers of Lincoln Park always have a place to learn. We also always make sure we stay close to our community all year round by ensuring our Bravo Bash recital is close by at the Athenaeum Theater and our summer camps held in our beautiful studio. What we love more than anything is with such a vibrant neighborhood around us, we often find families walking by our studio with excitement in their eyes at our gorgeous interior and magical classes led by our amazing teachers, bringing in more students for us to twirl with. We pride ourselves on being such a pillar of the community and hope to continue to flourish in the years to come through our classes, camps, parties, and various special events!

To continue to serve our community, our classes are ongoing for dancers 6 months to 8 years old, but you can also find us at various street and school fairs, such as the Burley Elementary Fall Fun Fair on October 19th and of course, we’ll be twirling away again into the Lincoln Park Library for our monthly Ballet Book Club event on September 27th. Not only that, we always offer free trial classes for dancers to try out our program, and we always host special events at our studio to welcome dancers into our space and see what we’re all about!!

How Do We Work With Our Community?

Since we’ve moved into the Lincoln Park neighborhood, we’ve made it our mission to be an active member of the community around us. By being part of the Chamber of Commerce for the location, we’ve participated in several events, fairs, and fundraisers to show our support. We find it’s really important to do outreach as much as we can, not only to create dancing opportunities for children, but to expand and strengthen our community and the arts within it, being a representative. You can often find our table in the Children’s Activity Booth at the Lincoln Roscoe Art Fair or with our street display during the Lincoln Park Chamber of Commerce Sidewalk Sale. Sometimes we might even be dancing through the aisles of the Lincoln Park Library! When seasons change, we’ll be twirling away at the Lincoln Park Spooktacular to pass out candy to children in the community or joining our neighbors in decorating our windows for an extra bit of holiday cheer! 

Not only are we participating in various happenings throughout the area, we also are partnering with the fellow businesses around us. None of us can grow without the support and encouragement of those in the neighborhood, so we make sure we find ways to work together with our neighbors. Whether it’s a cross-promotional event, discount, or even just a shoutout or purchase, we do our due diligence to ensure everyone is welcomed and seen in our community. 

So in that same spirit, we want to take a moment and highlight below just a few of our favorite businesses in the area and share why they mean so much to us and our Tutu School families!

Lose Yourself at Lost Soul Found!

Lost Soul Found was founded by Suzanne D’Addario Brouder in 2024, opening up right beside us as we were just beginning our twirling journey into Lincoln Park. With years of interior design, fashion, and entrepreneurship behind her, Suzanne opened Lost Soul Found with the intention of bringing eclectic, globally inspired clothing, jewelry, and home goods to shoppers to find the style they were looking for and pieces that seamlessly fit into a missing piece of their world. Thanks to the combination of a coffee bar and her effortless hospitality, Lost Soul Found makes you feel endlessly welcomed and cared for the second you walk through the door. It’s truly become our favorite one-stop shop and cafe!

We’ve absolutely adored having Lost Soul Found as a neighbor, helping to bring sweet treats to our Tutu Schoolers and families! They have been such a wonderful place for our caregivers to browse and explore while their dancers twirl away in class. We often find many of our dancers relaxing in their cafe or picking up a new find for their home after ballet, which makes being right beside Lost Soul Found so special! With just a year of being open, we’re so excited to see them continue to grow and work more with them to serve our community. Keep an eye out for a special partnership soon!

Find A Treat At Sweet Mandy B’s!

Opening up in May of 2002, Sweet Mandy B’s was born out of a love for traditional sweet treats that brought comfort to everyone who tried them. Wanting to serve their community with happiness and warmth, they created their space with the mission to evoke a sense of nostalgia and a welcoming energy that only a small neighborhood bakery could provide. With our shared love of pastel colors and bringing joy to families and children alike, Sweet Mandy B’s has become a staple of Lincoln Park that we have loved watching shine and bring sweet treats to anyone who walks through their doors. 

If you’ve ever been to a big Tutu School event or birthday party, you’re well acquainted with Sweet Mandy B’s cupcakes. Since our beginning in Roscoe Village, Tutu School has used Sweet Mandy B’s as our cupcake provider for every party, event, and conference we can! They have been one of our longest vendors here in Chicago, with all of our families, teachers, and staff members finding their way to trying one of their amazing cupcakes. We were so thrilled when we decided to twirl into Lincoln Park to find ourselves so close to our favorite bakery and continue to work with them as we now dance through two locations in the city. Sweet Mandy B’s has always been so incredibly communicative, accommodating, and thoughtful about every order we have put in with them, serving only the most delicious and high quality sweets we could possibly ask for, especially for our most special occasions. We are beyond thankful that we can continue to be their neighbor and customer for so many amazing years and we can’t wait to keep working with them for many more!

Seek Out Stories At The Lincoln Park Library!

While our studios in Roscoe Village and Lincoln Park are full of tutus and magic, community spaces like libraries are important gathering places where all children and families can learn, grow, and connect– and we always bring our Tutu School sparkle wherever we go (and we might just have a few extra tutus in toe, too!). Libraries provide free access to information, education, and inspiration where everyone can learn, and we can’t think of a better home for the Ballet Book Club. With this monthly event partnership, little dancers can be little readers and can sign up for their very first library card with the help of the incredible library staff after our storytime session!

The Lincoln Park Branch has welcomed Tutu School and our dancers with open arms, and their warm, family-friendly space and passionate staff make each visit special. Hosting our Ballet Book Club here allows us to reach a wide audience, introduce more families to the joy of dance, and celebrate the incredible role that libraries and literacy play in childhood development.

Plus, what better place to discover a new favorite story than a library? After each session, dancers are encouraged to check out books, sign up for a library card, or explore the children’s section with their grown-ups. Little dancers leave the library proudly showing off their brand-new cards, and we couldn’t be prouder to help usher in a lifelong love of reading. We love how many of our students come in with new books they’ve read and borrowed from our literary neighbor and we can’t wait to continue to work with them to help our students explore more storytime adventures!

We Are So Thankful For Our Neighbors

Without all of the amazing businesses and community members around Lincoln Park, our vibrant neighborhood wouldn’t be what it is today and we wouldn’t be twirling through so many years in it without their support and connections. We love seeing other neighbors thrive and shine alongside us throughout the many changes and journeys we continue to go on. We’re so grateful for having Lincoln Park as a place to call home, being its source for twirling, magic, and dance education, adding to its wonder one pirouette at a time. With many more adventures to come, we look forward to seeing new and old Tutu Schoolers grow and flourish around us, as well as seeing our fellow businesses continue to make our pocket of Chicago that much more special. 

So to Lincoln Park with all our Tutu Schoolers and neighbors in it, thank you for the music, thank you for the dancing, and thank you for the magic!