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And though Ashton never felt treated differently, their keen awareness of being Black in a room full of white dancers created a pressure to excel.'I've had to be 12 times better than everyone else my whole life,' Ashton says. She kept a close eye on the aspiring dancer throughout their 12 years in the Flint School of Performing Arts program-though Ashton's journey there wasn't always easy.ДЄshton was one of only a handful of boys in the school, and one of very few Black students. Once the Edwards family decided Ashton would continue ballet training, Jennings was happy to place them in her classes with the more advanced students. Beyond these gifts, Ashton had what Jennings calls a 'spark': the enthusiasm and self-discipline to devote to regular ballet classes. Jennings recognized Ashton's natural flexibility, rotation and body proportions, the physical assets that often propel a hopeful ballet dancer to success. 'I was afraid he was going to fall and crack his head open,' she says.

It was Ashton, and Jennings saw the child was copying the students in her intermediate class. 'There was this little guy out in the hallway,' Jennings remembers. Karen Jennings, now chair of the dance division at the Flint School of Performing Arts, ran the Saturday program at the time. The year after the family trip to Nutcracker, when Ashton was just 4 years old, Latisha signed them up for a dance class offered through Flint's Head Start program. She knew she had to find something to focus all that energy. 'He'd crash into plates in the kitchen,' she laughs.

Ashton's mother, Latisha Edwards, says for as long as she can remember, Ashton, the sixth of seven Edwards siblings, has been in constant motion, dancing on any flat surface in the house.

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