Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet’s founding artistic director Marcia Dale Weary has died.

The announcement was made Monday morning on CPYB’s Facebook page:

“It is with enormous love and sadness that I share that our Founding Artistic Director, Marcia Dale Weary has passed. She built a legacy through the best in classical ballet training. Her legacy will continue through all of us at CPYB who share the same values and love for what she stood for. Marcia will be missed as she is loved by so many. We thank you Marcia for the beauty you brought to this world. Memorial services and tributes for Marcia with further information will be forthcoming,” read the post written by Nicholas Ade, the group’s chief executive officer.

Weary was instrumental in bringing CPYB the top of the dance field. The New York Times once called her one of “the country’s foremost ballet teachers.”

Under Weary’s direction, CPYB started in 1955 and grew from a small dance studio into what is now 14 studios, located at the group’s Warehouse Studios and at the historic Barn Studios, both in Carlisle. Classes are also taught at the Capital Blue Store in Enola.

CPYB is known as one of the most prestigious ballet schools in the nation, with alumni holding positions in ballet companies such as New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Boston Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet and Pennsylvania Ballet.

More than 21,000 students have passed through the institution, which teaches beginner to pre-professional dancers, according to the school’s website.

“We produce many, many dancers, and many of them are very well-known and some are even famous. It comes from a place of training. You have to have good basic training. So many children come to me when they are 13 or 14 and they haven't had it. It's so hard for them to go back and relearn,” Weary said in a 2011 PennLive story.

She produced full-length ballets in the 1960s at the local Carlisle high school auditorium. Today, CPYB is the resident ballet company of the Whitaker Center in Harrisburg, with a season of classical and contemporary performances in the fall, winter, spring, and in June.

It is the only pre-professional school in the world licensed to perform George Balanchine’s “The Nutcracker."

Through the years Weary was recognized with honors and awards including a 2007 recipient of the Pennsylvania Governor’s Award for the Arts for Outstanding Leadership and Service to Youth and a 1992 Distinguished Service to the Arts Award for Central Pennsylvania.