Alva Review-Courier -

HUTCHINSON, Kan. (AP) — On stage, Emma Blakley feels free - free from the past, free from the future, free to focus on nothing else but her dance.

"It's a time when you're just purely right there and you're with an audience that's also right there with you," she said. "There's nothing else that really matters."

At 17, Emma Blakley already knows what she wants to do with her life. She's known since she was two when her aunt sent her a VCR tape of the Nutcracker ballet. Fascinated, by the ballet dancers, Blakely would ask her mom to play the video over, and over again. As the years went by, she...