Beyond Performance: Kari Brunson, Line Cook

For most dancers, injuries are devastating. But when Kari Brunson got a stress fracture in her foot last May, all she could think was “Thank God.” Then a corps member at Pacific Northwest Ballet, Brunson had just come off a highly successful season and was cast in a number of soloist and principal roles. “It was so odd,” says Brunson, 27. “I should have been excited for the opportunities. Instead, I was relieved to get injured.”

Six to eight weeks off for recovery was a welcome opportunity to explore the world outside of dance. Up to that point, Brunson had dedicated her life to ballet: She left home at 14 to train at the School of American Ballet and had performed with PNB since 2002. “Suddenly I had all this time. So I called Francia [Russell, PNB’s founding artistic director] to ask if her son, Ethan Stowell, wouldn’t mind me coming in to cook at one of his four restaurants,” says Brunson. Although she had no experience working in a professional kitchen, Brunson had inherited a passion for food from her mother. She kept a popular food blog and even taught a cooking class at PNB’s school one summer.

Stowell agreed to test out Brunson’s skills one weekend, and after a successful shift, he invited her to be a “stage,” or apprentice, for the summer. “I was addicted from the minute I started,” says Brunson. “I did prep work, they had me taste things and asked what I would add to it, and they even let me cook right away.” Instead of attending culinary school, she honed her skills by working directly with experienced chefs.

Brunson returned to the studio in the fall, but only made it two weeks into the season before deciding to break her contract and retire. She explains, “I just couldn’t do it anymore—all I wanted was to cook.”

Now a line cook at Stowell’s newest restaurant, Staple & Fancy Mercantile, Brunson says she misses her “beautifully toned muscles” and paid vacations, but she doesn’t miss dancing. “I left at a good place. The creativity of dancing has carried over into my food,” she says. “It’s a ridiculously similar profession because cooking is live, just like ballet, and maybe you’ll pull off four pirouettes or maybe the potatoes will boil over. The kitchen attracts the same kinds of crazy people who are addicted to that chaos and drama.”

Brunson admits that she often feels out of her league and gets overwhelmed by the amount she still has to learn. She’s also had to get used to being out of the limelight: “Customers definitely do not treat cooks the same way patrons of the ballet treat dancers.” Nonetheless, she loves her new lifestyle and plans to one day open up her own restaurant.

Her success thus far she credits to the stamina and professionalism she learned in the studio. “When it comes down to it, any job is 10 percent talent and 90 percent sheer will,” she says. “Dancers are extremely hard workers who’ve been driven their entire lives. That’s a very easy person to employ.”

Originally published in Beyond Performance, a supplement to Dance Magazine and Dance Teacher, September 2010