Eastern Connecticut Ballet has a routine: Every other year — and outside of the East Lyme-based group’s hugely popular “The Nutcracker” — ECB presents an all-school show. This is where the younger students get to be onstage, and the company dancers — a highly accomplished group selected via audition — perform as well.

On alternate years, ECB stages a production featuring just the company dancers.

But what about those younger dancers during those alternate years? Well, this time around, they are getting the chance to perform. ECB decided to put together a story ballet featuring both company dancers and youths in the school’s level 1 and up.

Then, of course, came the question of what piece to showcase. Gloria Govrin — the former New York City Ballet soloist who is now ECB’s artistic director — thought that “La Boutique Fantasque” might be a good fit. And she could find a place for the younger dancers; she could cast them as dolls in this tale set in an enchanted toy shop where the owner makes magical mechanical dolls.

ECB sent an email to all the dancers from level 1 and up (so not the preschoolers) to see who might want to participate. The students had to make a commitment to come to rehearsals outside of class.

The response was extremely enthusiastic: This production boasts most of the school — 86 dancers, from age 7 up through high school.

Govrin, who choreographed the piece, says, “It was basically an experiment, a little terrifying at first. With (ECB’s) ‘Nutcracker,’ I work with the younger kids when they’re already ‘baked’ — they already know the steps, and I rehearse the older kids. To choreograph for younger children is a lot different.”

“I thought, ‘Well, okay, let’s jump into this and see what happens,’” she says.

A little about “La Boutique Fantasque”: It premiered in 1919, when Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes performed Léonide Massine’s choreography in London. The storyline finds separate customers wanting to purchase one each of a pair of dolls. Those dolls, though, don’t want to be separated. A fairy swoops in and makes them disappear so that, when the buyers return to pick them up, the dolls aren’t there.

Govrin had never seen “La Boutique Fantasque” performed, so she let the music — which she describes as very playful — guide her when creating “The Magic Toy Shoppe.” (Ottorino Respighi composed the music based on piano pieces by Gioachino Rossini.)

As she went through the process, Govrin made some changes, including switching up the ending. She devised some different characters, too. The original featured dancing poodles, for instance; here, there are magical birds.

“I was nervous about how to put this story together,” Govrin says. “If you could see some of my notebooks! What I do is I sit at home in my kitchen, and I play the music and then I write down, scene by scene — okay, this is this doll, this is that doll ... now the proprietor comes in — and how much music I have for each section.”

What she ended up doing with the younger dancers is making them essentially the corps de ballet to the older, more accomplished dancers, who serve as soloists.

For the younger group, that meant focusing on what they could handle — to stay in line, to stand like a dancer, to know when and where to go.

ECB founder and executive director Lise Reardon says, “It’s a nice balance because you’re challenging everybody where they are.”

She adds, “When you talk about educating young children, it’s about age appropriateness. What a lot of people don’t understand is a lot of what these levels 1 and 2 are doing is what they should be doing. It’s part of that foundation work for what comes next. So we try to take that into consideration. We’re putting these pieces together rather than giving them a whole lot of steps they’re just not ready to handle yet and they won’t look good doing.”

As part of that, too, the little ones rise to the occasion. Take, for instance, 18 of those younger performers who play little fairies, accompanying an older dancer as the principal fairy. On the first day of rehearsal, Govrin recalls, she watched and thought the sequence wasn’t going to work. She was already contemplating a Plan B.

“But, for some reason, in a two-hour rehearsal, it all came together,” she says.

She has seen the young dancers who portray the little birds “doing things that I never thought in a million years they could do — keeping their lines, doing their counts, making little switches. It’s really quite charming.”

This is Mother’s Day weekend, of course, and Reardon hopes people will come to the matinee performances as a family.

Children who really love dance might want to climb onstage after the performance to have their photos snapped with some cast members.

And since the production is about a toy shop, ECB is incorporating a toy drive. Those who donate to the Spring Toy Drive, which is coordinated by Lymes’ Youth Services Bureau benefitting area children’s hospitals and shelters, have the chance of winning an American Girl Doll or a prize from The Bowerbird, which is “The Magic Toy Shoppe’s” sponsor.

What: Eastern Connecticut Ballet's "The Magic Toy Shoppe"

When: 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday

Where: Lyme-Old Lyme High School Auditorium, 69 Lyme St., Old Lyme

Tickets: $12 kids, $18 adults in advance at ECB's studio, 435 Boston Post Road, East Lyme, or the Bowerbird, Old Lyme; tickets at door $14 for kids, $20 adults; kids 3 and younger admitted free if sitting on a parent's lap

Contact: (860) 739-7899, easternctballet.com