Mother Stories
Meet Chicago Mama Genevieve Custer Weeks, Founder of Tutu School
Written by Erin Feher
Photography by Photographed by Petra Ford
Feb 26, 2019
Genevieve Custer Weeks is passionate about the power of dance. The former professional ballerina knows the joy and freedom that comes from twirling alongside a corps de ballet to swelling classical music, and has made it her mission to bring a little of that magic to tiny dancers everywhere. Genevieve founded Tutu School, a ballet studio that offers a warm, supportive, and developmentally appropriate dance curriculum for children aged 18 months to 8 years—not to mention, plenty of tulle. Over the past decade, Genevieve has grown both her business and her family: she is a mama to three boys (including five-year-old twins), and thanks to a successful franchise model, Tutu School now boasts 33 locations in eight states. Follow along as the down-to-earth CEO invites us into her colorful Chicago home and talks about how she learned to stopped stressing about apples and why tutus can be empowering.
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- "We moved into this house two years ago after 13 years in San Francisco. Our neighborhood is called North Center. We picked it for the local school and then waited until we found a house we fell in love with, but we’ve since learned that over a hundred years ago my great great grandfather owned a house on the very same street, just a few blocks away! My mother found a photograph of my grandmother—who passed away many years ago, but who I was close to in childhood—as a baby sitting on the front porch of this big, old beautiful house that I can walk my boys by anytime. It's a crazy and beautiful coincidence, and kind of confirmed to me that we really came home when we moved here."
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- "Colorful. Comfortable. We also try to fill our space with things that mean something. The house number and a map of our old house in San Francisco are up in our bedroom. There’s a huge canvas of bison we saw on a family road trip to South Dakota in our living room. And we turned a brick wall-facing window above our staircase into a collaborative art project: This past summer we took a road trip to Yellowstone, and we assigned the boys a mission to 'Be on the lookout for Adventure Sky.' Anytime they would spot a cloud formation or a color in the sky they loved, they would yell, 'Adventure Sky!' Then we would pull over and my husband, Andrew, who is a photographer, would take a photo of it. This fall we picked one of the photos and hung it in the window frame to replace the brick wall view with a permanent reminder to go after adventure."
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- "I have always been really drawn to color, and to many different colors at different points in my life. I think I feel in color. I love the strong bright colors in our house, but I also really respond to Tutu School’s pastel palette at work. I think I just love color."
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- "I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin and moved away from home to Chicago at the age of fifteen to train at the School of Ballet Chicago. I was still there five years later when I met my husband, Andrew. Although we were just dating at the time, I asked him if he would move to San Francisco with me when I got a contract offer with the Oakland Ballet. We ended up staying in San Francisco for 13 years. During that time we got married, started his photography studio, launched Tutu School, finished my career as a professional ballet dancer, and had three children."
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"I set up Tutu School’s operating model very selfishly because, while I’ve always felt that I am a better mom and a happier person with a career apart from motherhood, I still really want to be around for school pick-ups and swim lessons and soccer practice. Many of our owners are parents, too, and feel the same way, so we’ve made sure that each studio can be run from a place of flexibility, with tools like cloud-based proprietary software and an overarching company culture that supports families and parenthood."
Genevieve wears a Stoned Immaculate sweater and Anthropologie pants. Sullivan, Hudson, and Thatcher wear Busy Bees shirts.
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- "Yes. I actually just stumbled across an old journal from my teenage years where I talked about how important it was to me to become a mother someday. It was honestly a little startling to read now from the perspective of an adult. But if you knew me at the time you’d know I basically only dreamed about ballet and babies."
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- "I was lucky. I had pretty straightforward pregnancies and deliveries both times, although with my twin pregnancy I did look like a Dr. Seuss character."
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- "No. I was very fortunate to have amazing people in place at Tutu School both times that absolutely held down the fort so I could step away slightly, but there was no formal leave. In fact, the agreement on our first franchise location was inked a couple weeks before I had Hudson and Thatcher, and the location opened a few months later, just before the owner had a baby of her own. There were trade-offs. There was no official leave, but there wasn’t a boss expecting me back at work after a certain magical number of weeks, either. I was that boss, and that certainly had its advantages."
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- "Sullivan is almost ten. Hudson and Thatcher are both five. In no particular order they love: Legos, coding, hockey, Hatchimals, retro video games, Ghostbusters, making 'inventions' with random household items they steal from us, American Girl dolls—which we have been instructed to refer to as simply 'American dolls'—soccer, chess, and begging for screen time and sugar."
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- "Sullivan James, Thatcher William, and Hudson Robert. They all have last names as first names—we joke that it sounds like we are calling a law firm to dinner. For middle names we picked family names that are traditional first names. Otherwise each kid would have three last names!"
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"Getting to be a part of shaping young lives. Helping my children grow into the best version of themselves."
Genevieve wears a Pilcro and the Letterpress velvet jumpsuit.
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- "Being responsible for shaping young lives and helping my children grow into the best version of themselves."
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- "I love being a mother of boys. I honestly didn’t and don’t care about not having had a girl. I am raising three dramatically different children. Each one is a completely unique adventure, and I can’t imagine that being more true if one of them was born a girl."
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- "I always say the most amazing thing about having twins is getting to meet two of the loves of your life at the same time. It’s heart exploding. Twins in the baby and toddler years are more a challenge of logistics—taking care of two babies with just two hands, and that sort of thing. I actually find that I feel a bit more humbled these days, when they are little people facing the same developmental stages but with wildly different needs and personalities."
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- "Ha! No. I think we’re done. I always wanted three children. Andrew was pretty set on two. When we left the doctor after the first ultrasound where we learned we were having twins, he looked at me with a smile and said, 'Do you ever not get what you want?'"
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- "Each of the boys has a painting hanging in their rooms that Andrew made for their respective nurseries when they were born. Sullivan’s has boats because his nursery had a loose nautical theme, and the words to 'Row Row Row Your Boat' are hidden in the layers of paint. Hudson and Thatcher’s paintings actually fit together to form one larger one, and there are abstract representations of amusement park rides in each, because our mantra when found out we were unexpectedly expecting twins was, 'Enjoy the ride!'"
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- "Honestly, most parenting books end up making me want to tear my hair out. I usually prefer reaching out to an in-person expert or a group of other moms. If I’m dealing with a parenting challenge, cutting through the sense of loneliness around it helps me move forward with more clarity and more confidence."
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- "My own mother. She’s an entrepreneur, too, so with her as my forever example, it never really occurred to me that I couldn’t be both a founder and a mom."
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- "I had a very happy, very full childhood. My parents filled it with a lot of rich experiences—travel and art and theater and nature and a collection of people who were very involved and invested in my life. Many of my closest friends to this day are from my childhood and teenage years."
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- "The summer before last, I overheard Sullivan and Thatcher playing a game—Sullivan was pretending to be me and he said, 'Remember to be grateful for everything. No, you can’t have Cheetos!' I think that’s a pretty good surface-level summary of my parenting philosophy."
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- "These days I feel my responsibility as the head of a company that serves children—and especially many young girls—even more deeply than I have at any time before. At Tutu School we are currently in the midst of updating our Ballet Storytime curriculum, where we teach kids the stories of famous classical ballets, so that we can highlight incredibly positive messaging for students. As much as I want to make sure that no young girl ever feels like she has to wear a pink or purple tutu to conform to someone else’s idea of girlhood, you better believe I want her to know that she can be strong and brave and kind and smart in that tutu if that is her choice."
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- "Pretty consistently. I think that it's probably unavoidable when you care as much about something as we’re all bound to care about being good moms. I do try to at least be more aware of it so that I don’t get stuck wasting energy on guilt that could instead go towards being the kind of mom I’m worried about not being. I remember so clearly a moment a few years ago when I was packing a school lunch for my oldest one night, and reached for an apple to add to it. I stopped, because I was worried there was already too much sugar in his lunch, and I stood there sort of paralyzed about whether or not this additional piece of fruit was going to tip some kind of nutritional balance. Then I looked at the apple in my hand and realized that it was one we had picked a few days before on a weekend afternoon when I took all three boys (two of whom were toddlers at the time) by myself out to a co-op orchard I’d researched and joined specifically so we could go and have a fun outing picking organic apples. And I decided that maybe I should try to take it a little bit easier on myself."
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"Honestly, it’s one of the things that most attracted me to our house—a finished attic with tons of natural light that runs the length of the house. Both Andrew and I run our own companies, so a home office is essential—he took one end of the attic and I got the other. To be able to have a work space at home that is so separate from the rest of our living space felt—and feels—like such an incredible thing. It’s the one corner of the house that’s completely mine, and I do treat it like a bit of an oasis."
Genevieve wears a Moth puff sleeve sweater and Chicwish striped skirt.
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- "Recently, I’ve focused more on making sure that when I tell my boys I need to work on Tutu School, it doesn’t sound like an apology or an unwanted obligation. They know how important they are to me, but I also want them to know how lucky I feel to have the thing I do to help support and provide for our family be a thing that I love and believe in."
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- "Everything happens in cycles. No part of motherhood—the amazing or the challenging or the messy place in between—is forever, and in the beginning it’s all especially fleeting. Don’t waste your limited energy and hormone-challenged mental health wondering if every new stage is the 'new normal.' None of it is, and very few of the decisions you make about how to tackle issues in your child’s infancy will follow them long-term except for the love you show them and the confidence you nurture in yourself as a mother."
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- "I love that Chicago is a big city—and I love the energy in this city—but that our neighborhood feels like its own little village. In the mornings, kids and parents are all coming out of the houses and heading towards school at the same time together, and that feeling of close community in the middle of a larger city is one of my very favorite things about having moved back here to raise our kids."
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- "No. Not anymore. Both Andrew and I grew up in the Midwest, met in Chicago, and moved back here after 13 years in San Francisco. Our family is here. Both our siblings and parents are in Chicago, or close by, so my kids have two sets of grandparents and core family members that are involved and invested in their lives on a regular basis. I can’t imagine leaving that. Many of our closest friends from childhood and adolescence are still in the Midwest, too. Coming back here had been on our minds for a while when we were living in San Francisco, so by the time we finally made the move, it really and truly felt like coming in for a much needed landing."
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- "Summer House Santa Monica for lunch; Danny’s for drinks; Soho House for dinner, drinks, or a cozy corner to work; Montrose Beach for real summer and sand in the city; The Field Museum for exploring with the boys; The Art Institute for running away in the afternoon."
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- "I was dancing professionally and in between gigs, teaching on the side. Very quickly I really fell in love with teaching ballet to preschoolers and young children. At the same time, I saw how neglected they were at traditional dance studios. Often there was no thoughtful—let alone magical—curriculum for very young dancers. The spaces they were attending classes in were cold and uninviting, and the teachers leading classes were not trained in developmentally appropriate teaching. Ironically, those were the classes that were most requested by parents. There was a demand, but it was being met poorly in every respect. I started dreaming of a boutique-style ballet school that would focus solely on children under the age of eight. By concentrating specifically and intensely on that age group, I knew we would be able to celebrate all of the things I love most about ballet and to develop a truly age-appropriate arts education program. I told my husband that I thought this was a business I wanted to open when I retired from performing, and he asked, 'Why wait?' We opened the first Tutu School in San Francisco a few months later."
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- "I wish more founders—and female founders in particular—would consider franchising as a way to scale their businesses. It’s not just for fast food. Although I feel that attitudes are slowly shifting, for a long time I think that there has been a perception that only certain types of businesses are franchiseable. In reality, not having to take on significant outside investment while at the same time creating an entrepreneurial community of owners who are devoted to your mission—and in effect become your investors—is a pretty incredible way to grow a brand that you believe in."
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- "Typically, potential owners fill out a brief inquiry form online and that kicks off a series of conversations. We get to know one another and explore Tutu School’s mission, brand values, and community of existing owners to see if everything—the whole picture—is a good fit. Once we know that’s all in alignment, there’s a very straightforward process of actually setting up and launching a new Tutu School."
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- "Tutu School’s entire reason for existing is to make space in children’s lives for creative joy. Every aspect of the program is completely tailored to very young children—our students are 18 months to 8 years old—so that we can introduce them to music and movement in a way that makes sense for their bodies, their minds, and their imaginations."
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- "We’re growing quickly but organically. Just this month two new Tutu Schools opened in Seattle and the Bay Area, and at the end of last year we launched in Arizona and near San Diego. So many of our first generation of Tutu School owners now have two or more studios and are preparing to open others. I really can’t wait to see where the next few years take this community of entrepreneurs, but I love that it feels more like a thoughtfully expanding family than a rapidly growing company."
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- "There are seasons and cycles to everything. It is rare that I have a day or week that is perfectly divided between all of the things that are important to me. But from week to week and season to season, I do think that there is a broader kind of balance that emerges, and that you can only really appreciate if you don’t get bogged down stressing about your failure to give everything equal time in any given 24-hour period."
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- "I like clean lines and fun patterns. Nothing too fussy. When in doubt, I veer towards the classic."
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- "Yes. I spend a lot more time in yoga pants than I used to."
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- "I would live in jumpsuits if I could. To me they just feel easy. You can dress them up or down, travel in them, go out in them, play on the floor in them. I wouldn’t say I have one designer I wear more than another. I was an early adopter of Rent the Runway’s unlimited subscription. I love their whole concept of having a wardrobe in the cloud, and being able to keep a new bag, or jacket, or skirt until I get sick of it and then exchange it for something new."
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- "I have a mild obsession with charcoal masks, and Beautycounter makes my current favorite. Really, I’ve only recently started taking care of my skin in any sort of meaningful way, and I’m surprised by how happy that simple change has made me. One of the few consistent things I’ve done over the years is to have my brows done regularly. I wish the Benefit Brow Bar had the equivalent of frequent flyer miles, because visits there are a staple for me, whatever city I’m in. It’s so easy to run in and come out feeling like my entire face has been lifted and freshened up."
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- "One of the things I miss most about dancing professionally is that exercise was a regular part of my job. I am definitely happier when I’m active. These days I work out most often at SoulCycle, because sweating that much to music is the closest I can get to being back onstage again, dancing a really hard ballet, but I also mix in a little Pilates and try to sneak into ballet class when I can, too."
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- "My family has a cabin in Door County, Wisconsin, several hours north of Chicago. It’s my happy place. Now that we’re back in the Midwest we try to get up there as much as we can. I love the contrast to the city. I take long walks, stare at the waves on Lake Michigan, and read by the fire. I breathe differently there, and I notice when I am away for too long."
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"Last month, I wrote down as an intention for this year that I want to 'live inside the music' more, both personally and professionally. I’m not always very good at being in the moment. I’m terrible at meditating. For me as a dancer, though, some of my very favorite minutes spent on stage were not when I was in a featured role—although that was lovely in a different way— but when I would be dancing a part in a beautiful piece with the corps de ballet and just get so absorbed in the music and the choreography that I felt like I could live there, and didn’t need to try and be anything else beyond those notes and those steps. This year I really want to double down on keeping both myself and Tutu School firmly rooted in who we are. So, I’m going to practice living inside the music as much as possible."
Sullivan, Hudson, and Thatcher wear matching Hanna Andersson PJs.
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- For more on Genevieve, her trio of boys, and her dance empire, follow along with her personal feed and the Tutu School feed on Instagram.
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