Blake Brown is 23-years-old, and her life has been a two-act ballet. In Act I, she sold her soul.

Her mission to excel began in 2008 when her mother enrolled her in the Ballet Society of Colorado Springs, a rigorous dancing school.

Twenty girls in a practice room, dressed in identical bright blue, capped-sleeved leotards, stood uniform and poised like mechanical jewelry box ballerinas.

The middle-aged ballet mistress with graying hair pulled tight into a bun, strolled around the room. She moved like a shadow in her usual all-black attire observing, critiquing and insulting her dancing army.

The classes were intense—enough so for the teacher to slam on the brakes, cut off the music and completely stop rehearsals for the deer in the headlights: a then-pre-teen Brown who stood off to the side of the room.

“Blake, suck in your stomach! You look like a 12-year-old Buddha!”

Ouch.

Brown jokes about it now, saying, “Ballet is like a toxic boyfriend that calls me fat and makes me feel like shit and that I keep going back to no matter how many times we break up.”

An imaginary, toxic and demanding boyfriend.

In her high school years, Brown rushed to rehearsals after school, where she stayed from 3 to 9:30 p.m. There was no time to do homework, no time to study. With the “academics first” mantra thrown to the wind, Brown says she was lucky to have made it through.

But she recalls her time training as time well spent. She danced at the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago and the American Academy of Ballet in New York. In 2012, Brown began her professional career at the age of 15; she was contracted as a guest artist to perform at Ballet Idaho’s performance of The Nutcracker.

Then college happened.

Originally, college wasn’t in the cards for her. Her high school schedule proved dancing professionally while studying as a full-time student to be nearly impossible. But the combination of her older sister attending The King’s College and her father working there as head of development swayed her in the end.

Every day she ran from where she practiced in Times Square to King’s in the Financial District. There was no time to shower; only enough time to “pop on a blazer” and call it good enough, flushed face, messy hair and sweat be damned.

She remembers that in the first few weeks at college she often found herself standing with groups of girls. They’d take turns going around the circle introducing themselves.

When it was her turn, she would sprinkle in the fact that she was a professional ballet dancer—a good one. After all, she traveled across the country performing with world-renowned dancers and Broadway stars. But no one seemed particularly interested. Instead, they were preoccupied with another girl who was a YouTuber or something.

Eventually, Brown realized that no one thought twice about her accomplishments.

“At King’s, no one gave a shit… They didn’t understand what that meant the same way I understood it,” she explained.

Suffering back injuries, hip injuries, knee injuries and more, she had to take five painkillers a day just to wake up the next morning and do it again. Five a day! At one point, she even danced on a makeup sponge stuffed in her shoe to relieve some of the shooting pain in the ball of her foot, not realizing until later that it was fractured!

Did she really endure years of constant physical pain just for her college classmates to be more impressed by the girl who made YouTube videos?

Brown felt unimportant, and this was a bitter pill to swallow—particularly bitter when it raised the question: “If no one else cares, is ballet still worth it to me?”

She “quit” ballet several times. The longest of those breaks was seven months. Breakups happen, illnesses happen, death happens, but the track to excellence does not accommodate these inevitable moments of life.

In 2018, Brown performed in a soloist role in the Metropolitan Ballet’s performance of Swan Lake. In the same year, she landed her first principal role as Myrtha in the Metropolitan Ballet’s performance of Giselle. She joined the American Swiss Ballet company and represented them abroad in the summer of 2019 touring across Europe.

While in the South of France, she danced on an open-air stage constructed in front of the enchanting Ochre Mines of Bruoux. Towering cliffs of brilliant orange rock filled with vaulting, cathedral-like tunnels formed the venue’s natural theater.

Brown and the company of dancers performed five pieces on a tempestuous summer night. Rain threatened the entire evening and cool breezes blew through the dancers’ tutus.

There were five pieces, meaning five rushed costume changes in cramped tents.

“During the show, it was a huge rush. I didn’t have much time to think about it,” she said.

Her final costume consisted of a black, baroque-style corset, dark gargoyle wings and tights. When they finished the performance, thousands of red petals flew into the air and the audience tossed bouquets of roses onto the stage with thunderous applause.

She and the dancers were taking a final bow when a wave of overwhelming, intense emotion crashed down on her. She burst into tears.

“It was one of the best moments of my life,” she said. “I couldn’t believe how lucky I was—I was doing what I always wanted to do.”

In that moment, she achieved every ambitious ballet goal she set for herself.

“I didn’t think it would happen at the age of 21… I thought I’d be 30 by the time that happened,” Brown laughed.

She accomplished all of her dreams. Act I was over. So now what?

Act II.

In many ways, she has lived two lives: her former-self dying with the fulfillment of her goals and being reborn in a great awakening. She got her soul back. Kate Chopin would be proud.

“It was a slap of reality reminding me that this is what really matters,” Brown said, talking about her family.

Brown believes that her most precious and valued time is that spent with her mother, father and two sisters, Emma and Lillian.

“Family is what I’ll have in the end, and it’s what’s most important,” she explained.

Now she can finally answer that question that plagued her all those years. And her answer is yes.

Ballet will always be worth it, even if no one else cares. But she realizes now that other priorities don’t take away from the value of her passion itself. These experiences and accomplishments give her joy and pride. She says ballet is the best thing that ever happened to her.

At 23, there is still much more Brown plans to accomplish. Her time at King’s, majoring in Media, Culture and the Arts, opened those opportunities to her. She confirmed that the stereotypes are true: a lot of ballerinas don’t have lives outside of ballet, but she narrowly dodged that bullet.

Yes, Brown is a professional ballerina, but she is also a natural-born creative, drawn to a wide variety of artistic arenas. Her favorite films range from The Lord of the Rings trilogy to French new wave films such as Une Femme est Une Femme. She enjoys the artwork of Salvador Dalí and reading Susan Sontag’s writings. Brown still lives in New York and works at Hauser & Wirth as a gallery attendant as well as an artistic director for various film projects. And, of course, she continues to dance.

Blake Brown: Selling Your Soul to Ballet