Adrian Blake Mitchell

Born in Texas and raised in Los Angeles, Adrian Blake Mitchell began training at age 12 and attended schools such as the Westside School of Ballet in Los Angeles. He received scholarships from several prestigious ballet schools and summer programs including NYC’s School of American Ballet Summer Program, Bolshoi Ballet Academy & Miami City Ballet. His main training came from the Gelsey Kirkland Ballet Academy, the Ellison Ballet Professional Training Program (under Edward Ellison) and the The Acadamy of Russian Ballet (Vaganova Acadamy) in St Petersburg, Russia.

Adrian graduated in 2015 and joined The Mikhailovsky Theatre’s ballet troupe where he performed as a soloist. His roles with the company included the Fairy Carabosse in “The Sleeping Beauty” which was considered “one of the most striking debuts of [that] season”; Espada in “Don Quixote”, a friend of Birbanto in “Le Corsaire”, a Foreign Prince in “Cinderella”, Tybalt in “Romeo and Juliet”, the High Brahman in “La Bayadere”, and a Centurion in “Spartacus”; he has also performed in the Nacho Duato ballets “Multiplicity”, “Forms of Silence” and “Emptiness”, “White Darkness”, and “Duende”. Adrian was promoted to First Artist in 2021 and left Russia in 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine.

Adrian has initiated a scholarship fund under his name with Dance in Color, a nonprofit that works to ensure dancers of color receive support for their education, and is involved with his alma mater Westside Ballet’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee. He is also a part of Reunited in Dance, a group of dancers who left Russia and Ukraine due to the invasion of Ukraine.