Indiana University

By the time she was 8, Ashley and her mom were driving an hour every day after school so she could take classes at the Kansas City Ballet, which offered her a full scholarship after her first summer of training. She made her stage debut in The Nutcracker at age 9, as a soldier and Mother Ginger extra. Ashley later per- Ashley’s story formed with Ballet West’s touring production of Sleeping Beauty and in the summers trained at the Jillana School in Taos, New Mexico; the San Francisco Ballet School; the School of American Ballet in New York; and Alonzo King’s Lines Pre-Professional Program in San Francisco.

Her senior year of high school, Ashley was offered an apprenticeship at Kansas City Ballet. “It was an intense senior year. Then they moved our graduation date at the last minute, so it fell on the day of my senior ballet performance—and I was one of the valedictorians.

I chose ballet.” During summers at Kansas City Ballet, Ashley worked with Violette Verdy, an internationally known dancer and distinguished professor at Indiana University. “I really loved the way she taught. She was inspirational. One day—I was probably 14 or 15—she talked to me about going to college at IU. I didn’t know what college meant! But it stuck in my head.”