Burnsville native living showbiz dreams as a Las Vegas showgirl

Dance dreams do come true. Ashton Bray has had them as long as she can remember.

The Burnsville native was dancing 40 hours a week by the age of 10, and couldn't conceive of a world in which dance wouldn't be her full-time job. So when she got an offer to dance six nights a week on a Las Vegas stage, she took it. Eleven years later, she is still dancing on the same stage.

The show: "Fantasy." The costume: her birthday suit, mostly.

Bray is proud to appear nightly in one of Vegas' longest running female topless revues on the Strip. "Fantasy" turns 25 this week, and Bray is now its performance director.

"I'm living my dream," Bray said. "In my heels."

Bray, 35, has achieved a rare thing in show business. She is paid to do the art for which she trained, without having to support herself with a side hustle or the endless grind of auditions as gigs come and go.

"Not everybody is meant to live here in Vegas," she said after a performance. We met in the lobby of the theater in the Luxor, where "Fantasy" has played for a quarter of a century — and where comedian Carrot Top does his stand-up show earlier each evening. Bray had just come from a meet-and-greet with the audience, a nightly tradition where she takes compliments and sells calendars and other "Fantasy" swag.

"Everyone who works here, we're here because we worked our whole lives to achieve this dream of performing professionally and not having to do anything else, not having to be a barista or whatever," Bray said. "The people who have ended up here and are successful here are so focused on their dreams that nothing else can distract from that."

'You're perfect for Vegas'

Before she even got to Vegas, Bray was a dance veteran who had begun lessons at a Burnsville studio as a toddler.

"She told me at age 8 that she was going to be a professional dancer," said Trisha Ohlsen, Bray's mother. "Everything was surrounded by that. We'd be walking down the street and she would be dancing and singing. While everybody else was swimming and having fun at the lake, she would be practicing."

Her mother urged her to have a backup plan, but Bray was confident that she'd make it as a performer. "You know, you don't really argue with Ashton," Ohlsen said.

At Burnsville High School, Bray performed competitively on the Blazette dance team. She graduated in 2007, and left to study dance at Oklahoma City University, a school with a reputation for producing opera singers, Broadway stars and Rockettes.

As graduation approached, she started to think about what could come next.

"I wanted to be a pop star," Bray said. "It was either New York, L.A. or Vegas." She spent a little time on both coasts. But as a dog lover, Bray ruled out New York quickly. "I wanted a backyard. I wanted space."

A former sorority sister who had moved to Vegas invited Bray to visit. "She was like, 'You're perfect for Vegas. You're tall. You're perfect for this town,'" Bray remembered.

Indeed, at 5 feet 11, she stood out. Her first day in Vegas, she landed the first job for which she auditioned, and wound up performing for a year in "Bite." The show, which closed in 2013, was billed as "the first and only vampire show in Las Vegas."

Next, Bray went after a job in "Fantasy," auditioning in front of producer Anita Mann (really). An Emmy-winning choreographer and dancer, Mann had created "Fantasy" more than a decade earlier.

Bray had no qualms about taking the job. "The showgirl is a tradition that spans back generations, all the way to Paris," she said. "As long as there's been art there's been nudity. It's not necessarily for the male gaze. It's for everything. It's a tradition."

When "Fantasy" first opened, contemporaries, such as Jerry Mitchell's "Peepshow" and the stalwart "Jubilee," with costumes by Bob Mackie, harkened to the glittery heyday of variety entertainment in the mid-20th century. Those shows brought Broadway bravado to the desert, while a burlesque revival in the late '90s and early '00s added a wink and a tease.

"Fantasy" took a more modern approach, making pop, electronic and hip-hop music the headline. Cast members are athletic dancers who would be at home on an arena stage behind a mega-pop star; the emcee sings like Christina Aguilera. And there's no tease at "Fantasy" — just strip. The performers drop their sparkly bras before the end of the first group number.

But the cutthroat Vegas entertainment ecosystem is always in flux. "Peepshow" and "Jubilee" both closed in the mid-2010s, their particular style of glitzy adult entertainment edged out by aerial shows from Cirque du Soleil and others. "Fantasy" held on, constantly refreshing its numbers by bringing in celebrity choreographers and new music, and even adding an aerialist.

Bray has helped it adapt. "Of course, Vegas has changed; there's a million things to do," she said. "But for us to stay current we have to just fight for the attention. And we do." Drive around Vegas and you might catch her lashy brown eyes looking down on you from a billboard.

As performance director, Bray is responsible for teaching new numbers to the rest of the cast and training new hires. She coordinates who does what, "kind of like a big jigsaw puzzle." She's also served as the point person for the lighting, sound and front-of-house crews.

"Ashton has always stood out as an individual who wants to learn more. I am sure her quest for knowledge started at a young age, but I have watched it grow since she has been a part of 'Fantasy,'" Mann said. "Not only is she an incredible performer, but an amazing manager of people on and off the stage. I feel so blessed to have her in our company and am excited to see where her journey takes her."

Living a normal life

It hasn't been all sparkles and sequins during Bray's tenure. "Fantasy" had to weather the #MeToo movement and a nearly yearlong COVID closure.

"We were the first show" on the Strip to reopen, in February 2021, Bray said. The audience had to socially distance, and the cast, while still topless, had to wear masks.

As for #MeToo, "it did impact Vegas a lot," Bray said. But having a female producer behind the scenes, and a female emcee on stage, made the difference. "In such a delicate situation where there could be an abuse of power, that dynamic doesn't happen."

Outside of work, Bray and her husband, Jairon Bray, a DJ for large-scale events, take hikes on Mount Charleston, drive to the coast to see the ocean, and enjoy their dogs, a golden retriever and a beagle. The couple bought a house in Summerlin, just west of Las Vegas. Bray's parents moved to the city to be closer to her.

She tries to go back to Minnesota every year to visit family and make a trip to the North Shore. But if there was still any doubt, Vegas is where she's staying.

"My life is really normal until work," she said.

And the work itself is still fulfilling, more than a decade later.

"I'm holding on as long as I can," she said. "I don't feel sexualized. I feel empowered. I absolutely love what I do and it's helped me build this really beautiful life."