Dance

Will and grace

In a company packed with ambition and talent, NYCB’s new principal brings something extra to the stage.

By Gia Kourlas

Sara Mearns uses an oddly possessive expression to describe the ballet roles that seem to fit her best: “I feel like it’s my dancing.”

When it comes to this particular ballerina—a word you don’t just throw around casually—that dancing is emphatic and as alive as liquid gold. At New York City Ballet, Mearns, a newly promoted principal, is wholly awake: She is just as responsive to the air around her as she is to the music. That approach may be less obvious than her beauty, but in terms of musicality, Mearns is a daredevil onstage.

“I’m trying to find my way,” she admits. “I’ve done my homework. I’ve watched tapes of lots of ballerinas: Kyra Nichols, Wendy Whelan, Suzanne Farrell. I look at their timing and I see how they play with the music. I feel like I’m trying to do more of that—not to just stay on the music but to play around it. It’s hard to get right. But you just have to take chances.”

As her frequent partner, Jared Angle doesn’t know if Mearns is necessarily “trying to be tricky with the music,” as he puts it. But he does find her innate connection to it to be part of what makes her dancing so luscious: “I think that she has the kind of body and movement quality where you see the music in her,” he says. “But she also loves to work; she seems to always be rehearsing for ballets full-out, every day, even when she has a show. She’s in it to win it, I think.” Angle laughs. “Maybe she already has won it? But she’s very hardworking, and it’s not just about movement and feeling. She’s also still perfecting her technique, which is good, because she’s, like, 12 or something.”

Actually, Mearns is 22. Tall and blond, with long legs, broad shoulders and a tiny waist, she is no waif. She exudes a certain Southern sultriness rare in ballet; even as a teenager at the School of American Ballet, she already looked like a woman. Born in Columbia, South Carolina, she began her training at the age of three with Ann Brodie at the Calvert-Brodie School of Dance. In the beginning, it was all very typical. “My mom put me in ballet,” she recalls. “Every little girl wants to be a ballerina.” In her class, however, was Christian Tworzyanski, who is also a member of NYCB; in their early days, they competed regularly.

“We were seven or eight and we would rehearse until 11pm, and our tap teacher was very adamant about us getting it right,” Mearns says. “Starting so young has made me enjoy dancing. It’s not just going out there and doing steps or worrying about it—I actually love what I’m doing.”

Having moved to New York to attend SAB in 2001, Mearns joined NYCB in 2004; and just two years later, she was named a soloist. Her latest promotion, to principal, came in June, a day after one of the worst shows of her life in the company’s “Dancers’ Choice” program. Or so she thinks. “I don’t know,” she says with a sigh. “I think it was just my stupid mentality. I felt like it wasn’t my best, but then a lot of the times, when you think you’ve had your worst performance, people are like, ‘You were great!’ So it was kind of weird, but that always happens. I had a really bad show—for me—and the next day I get promoted. It’s like, Oh my God. Come on. You don’t accept it.”

Mearns rattles off a few of the practical reasons that led to her promotion; one, she stresses, had to do with injured dancers. “I was fortunate enough to replace them,” she says. “But I can’t believe it’s happened this fast. I’m not one of those people who expect things. You can’t. Especially not in this business.”

When she isn’t cast in the last ballet of the evening, Mearns, her face bare of makeup, can be found watching performances in the audience at the New York State Theater. “There’s no other place you can see all these ballets,” she says. “And personally, I don’t want to miss a show of the ballerinas that I look up to. Why just leave the theater and be like, I’m done? It’s not all about you. I feel if you’re dancing ballet and your life is about it, then watch it. Don’t just do your part and leave.”

Mearns performs with the New York City Ballet at the New York State Theater Nov 25–Mar 1.

NEXT: Highlights from Mearns’s past season »

More in Dance
Will and grace | Highlights from Mearns’s past season | Videos of Mearns rehearsing | Three to tango | Going too far | The odds

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