My Ballerina Dolls (MBD) is a line of deluxe dolls inspired by the classic ballets. These fully-poseable dolls are beautiful enough to be displayed in a collector's curio case but whimsical enough to delight a little girl on Christmas morning. Don't be deceived by their fragile appearance. Although they have an exquisite porcelain-like finish, they are made of durable vinyl, making them suitable toys for children of all ages.

How many gifts can be treasured for a lifetime? By giving your daughter, sister, granddaughter, niece, classmate, or friend a My Ballerina Doll, you're giving her a friend to treasure for life.

• As a little ballerina, she can strengthen her knowledge of ballet moves by playing with the fully poseable dolls.

• As a maturing ballet student, she can nurture her passion and expand her knowledge of ballet with MBD's engaging educational material.

• As a serious student dancer, she can celebrate her triumphs in the classroom and onstage with her beloved doll by her side.

• Even as a grown woman, she will treasure her Ballerina Doll as a beloved keepsake from her ballet school days. Years from now, she may share it with her own students or daughters, inspiring a new generation of ballerinas. 

Poseable Toys

Collectors love My Ballerina Dolls, but they weren't made exclusively for a display case. All our dolls are sturdy enough to be lovingly played with by children of all ages.

Because of their eighteen points of articulation, MBDs aren't just dolls which look like ballerinas. They're dolls which actually move like ballerinas!

Imagine the endless hours of fun girls will have posing their doll (or dolls!) in all the classical ballet positions. It can be educational, re-enforcing what younger girls learn in class, or inspirational, challenging older girls to be as precise as their vinyl "Mini-Mes." 

Collectible Dolls

Because of their exquisite design and details, you'll be proud to display a My Ballerina Doll in your doll collection. Although sold at a mass production price, these articulated dolls feature the same quality construction as counterparts which sell for thousands:

• 1/3 scale dolls.

• 100% vinyl/hard plastic bodies.

• Engineered jointing.

• 18 points of articulation (13 for 12" dolls), including double-jointed elbows and knees, a chest and waist joint, articulated wrists and ankles, thigh and arm swivels, and a neck pivot.

• Removable wigs with synthetic hair, attached with Velcro. Some dolls feature removable skullcaps.

• Stationary inset eyes.

• Made-up, molded faces, featuring painted eyebrows and lashes, closed mouths, and raised, painted lips.

• Molded hands in the correct ballet position.

• Deluxe polyester costumes and headpieces, which may feature tulle and plastic sequins as decorations.

Note: My Ballerina Dolls are a Western rebranding of the Chinese Ye Luoli dolls. All MBD dolls feature customized wigs, costumes, and faceups.

The History of My Ballerina Dolls

My Ballerina Dolls was founded in 2015 by Mark Erickson and his business partner and frequent artistic collaborator, Beverly Stephenson. For the past six years, they have been working together to bring the joy of ballet to children around the world through My Ballerina Dolls, just as they have worked together for fifteen years in bringing fine arts to the Temecula Valley. Part of that development has been supporting and collaborating on Mark's definitive version of The Nutcracker, which inspired the MBD products in The Nutcracker Collection. 

Every December, Mark would see little girls backstage at The Nutcracker, holding dolls they'd dressed up as characters. It occurred to him that there was no doll which specifically represented the popular Christmas ballet. This idea blossomed into the original concept for My Ballerina Dolls, the premiere brand of ballet-themed toys.

My Ballerina Dolls made their debut at The North American International Toy Fair in New York City in February 2015. They began with the three main characters inspired by his ballet, Clara-Marie, The Nutcracker/Prince Nicholas, and the Snow Queen, as well as the accompanying book written by Mrs. Stephenson. Since then, Mark has brought the growing MBD collection to the Toy Fair every year except 2021, when it was cancelled. In August 2015, the brand went public online. 

My Ballerina Dolls has received many honors during its six years of existence. This includes being featured on the cover of the Wooden Soldier catalogue, in The Toy Shoppe Catalog, in a front window display in the Enchanted Moments Showroom at AmericasMart Atlanta, in the Toyology Showroom at Las Vegas's World Market Center, in the American Jewel Showroom at the Dallas World Trade Center, on the Met Opera Shop, on British site My Doll Best Friend, on Samantha's Collectible Dolls and Bears, and on Sideshow Collectibles.

The greatest honor so far was being on ABC's television show The Toy Box. They competed on Season 1, Episode 2, and won, proceeding to the finals! Although My Ballerina Dolls didn't win a manufacturing deal with Mattel, the opportunity to receive insightful feedback from experienced judges while competing with other exciting toy brands was invaluable!

Meet the Makers

Mark Erickson

 Mark Erickson’s career has been a continual alternation between dancing and acting. While never a household name himself, he has worked with big names in both the ballet world and Hollywood since the 1980s. He was born in Colfax, Washington, but his family moved to a rustic 500 acre ranch in northern British Columbia, Canada, when he was two years old. Mark went to college in Pasadena, California. At age twenty, he started ballet as a favor to a ballerina he liked, eventually growing to love dancing. After leaving college, he danced at several Los Angeles studios. At one, he met and danced with Broadway actress Lane Bradbury, who invited him to join the Loft Studio on La Brea Avenue, where he studied with renowned acting teacher Peggy Feury. When he performed a scene with Lane at the Actors Studio West, director Mark Rydell approached him about being in his upcoming film. This turned out to be Mark’s first professional acting job, The River (1984), starring Mel Gibson and Sissy Spacek. He later played an uncredited photographer in Protocol (1984) and starred in American Gothic (1988), a British-Canadian horror film starring Hollywood legends Rod Steiger and Yvonne De Carlo. His television appearances include Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories (1987), In Living Color (1991), and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1994). Lane Bradbury also introduced him to world-renowned dancer William Martin-Viscount, who became Mark's dancing mentor and got him his first paid dancing job, The Nutcracker in Midland/Odessa, TX. During his professional ballet career, Mark performed leading roles in full productions of Don Quixote, Giselle, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, La Fille mal gardée, Les Sylphides, and multiple productions of The Nutcracker, plus individual concerts, galas, and occasional charity benefits. In 1991, he auditioned for the Los Angeles production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera and was cast in the male dancing part of the Slave Master/Shepherd, later opening with the new San Francisco production in December 1993. On August 13, 1994, his son, Tyler, was born. When Tyler began kindergarten, he could no longer visit his father in San Francisco on the weekends, so Mark moved to the Temecula Valley in 2000 to be near his son. After teaching at different studios and dancing occasionally for a few years, he started The Ballet Studio Inc. (TBS) in 2005. Mark moved his studio from its location of fifteen years to the Norris Performing Arts Center on April 19, 2021, the two studios having merged in January 2020. One of TBS’s enduring traditions is Mark’s unique version of The Nutcracker, which has been performed in the Old Town Temecula Community Theater since 2005. Over the years, he has adjusted the production, creating a festive tradition for his students and the community while bringing it closer to his dramatic vision. In 2011, Mark founded My Ballerina Dolls (MBD), based on the characters from his Nutcracker. Having just redesigned the brand, he is excited about bringing this company to the next level!  

To learn more about Mark Erickson's life and career, see his recent feature story in Shine On Hollywood Magazine.

 Beverly Stephenson

During the past thirty-five years, Beverly Stephenson has performed in almost every facet of the theater. Onstage, she dances, sings, and acts. Backstage, she writes musicals' books and lyrics, choreographs, directs, and produces local productions. As an accomplished seamstress, she also designs and makes all the costumes for many a show! She and her husband, Dan, have been one of the most influential joint forces for developing the Temecula Valley in Southern California. In 1971, Dan Stephenson founded Rancon Group, a real estate development group which has "master planned" the region's phenomenal growth during the last fifty years. After moving to Temecula in 1980, Beverly spearheaded the development of the performing arts in the growing area. In 1994, she was one of the original founders of the Fine Arts Network (FAN). She served originally as artistic director and has been executive director for the last fifteen years. She now serves on the FAN board to coordinate marketing. She also serves on the boards of San Diego Ballet, The Community Foundation Serving the Counties of Riverside & San Bernardino, the Temecula Theater Foundation, and Shakespeare in the Vines. She and her husband helped raise the funds to build the Old Town Temecula Community Theater. In the late 1990s, she collaborated with fellow FAN founder Bobbie Boes on The Nutcracker Musical, which featured lyricized versions of the ballet's famous songs. Beverly later revised a few of these songs for inclusion in Mark Erickson's unique production of The Nutcracker, in which she has played Clara-Marie's mother, Frau Stahlbaum, every year since its 2005 debut. In 2020, the Stephensons' winery, Europa Village, hosted an outdoor production of The Nutcracker because of the theater's closure, starting a yearly holiday tradition. Beverly is also a fiction writer, so she penned the book which accompanies Clara-Marie and the other magical characters from The Nutcracker Collection of My Ballerina Dolls. She is currently working on more books about these characters, which will further develop the charming stories behind My Ballerina Dolls.