Local woman made dreams real with hard work, resolve

Kylie Brown of Commerce Township knew from a young age she wanted to be a professional ballerina. When she was just 3 years old she started taking ballet lessons.

“I took ballet very seriously and I could never picture a life without it,” Brown says.

And so her journey began as she took dance classes at Suzanne’s Main Street Dance Centre in Milford for many years. Every summer from the time she was 13, Brown would leave home for ballet training with American Ballet Theatre, Cincinnati Ballet and Orlando Ballet Summer Intensives. Her senior year of high school she spent studying ballet at North Carolina School of the Arts. She went on to the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music to receive her bachelor of fine arts degree.

Now living in New York City, Brown is one of the leading dancers with the Ajkun Ballet Theatre, where she has danced since 2016.

“Ballet is an extremely competitive industry and making it to the end goal of dancing professionally is so sought after, with so few making it,” she says.

Have your ever wondered what a day in the life of a professional ballerina looks like?

Brown takes us through her routine in NYC leading up to a performance. She starts everyday with a 1 1/2hour company class to train and warm up for the day of rehearsals. Following this class, the dancers rehearse three to four hours depending on the season’s production. Brown ends her day with Pilates, strength crosstraining and rest.

One perk of being a professional ballerina, Brown says, is getting to do what she loves every single day. The biggest down side of being a professional ballerina is not being able to see her family more than a few times a year.

Brown’s favorite performance came with her debut in the leading role of the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker in 2019.

“I had worked my whole life to get to that point, and could feel tears of joy in my eyes when I was completing my final bow of the performance,” she says. “I felt the purest sense of accomplishment and pride in myself for all I had done.”

Brown recently danced in smaller-scale performances due to the pandemic, but this fall in New York City the Ajkun Ballet Theatre will be open to a full audience, where she will be able to perform in “Swan Lake” and “The Nutcracker.”