Sara Mearns Brings Her Most Authentic Self to the City Center Stage

March 31, 2025

Sara Mearns is a busy woman. Along with preparing for her next spring season with New York City Ballet, where she is a principal dancer, she is also curating and performing in an evening of dance: New York City Center’s Sara Mearns | Artists at the Center, running April 3–5. Plus, she’s the star of Stage Animal, a short documentary that follows the creation of one of the two new works that will have their world premieres at her NYCC program.

The Artists at the Center program, founded in 2022, allows dance artists the freedom to take risks and experiment with curating. Mearns tells Pointe that she’d been in talks with NYCC about curating for years, but didn’t rush taking on the role because she felt that whatever she presented should be special. “I wanted to make sure it wasn’t something they could see me do at New York City Ballet,” she explains “It had to feel personal and authentic. So it took a long time to figure out what that was.”

Mearns eventually settled on a program of two new works: a dance-theater piece co-created by National Ballet of Canada’s principal dancer and choreographic associate Guillaume Côté, with actor-writer Jonathon Young, and an abstract contemporary dance choreographed by and featuring the former Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater resident choreographer Jamar Roberts.

Sara Mearns and Gilbert Bolden III lunge in tendu devant and a la seconde, respectively, arms mirroring the working leg line, as they rehearse in a dance studio. — Sara Mearns and Gilbert Bolden III rehearsing Guillaume Côté’s *Don’t Go Home*. Photo by Jessica Dalene Photography, courtesy New York City Center.

The program will open with Côté and Young’s Don’t Go Home, featuring Mearns with newly promoted NYCB principal Gilbert Bolden III. The work explores the blurred boundaries between character and performer, and performer and self. In it, Mearns plays Sara, a dancer auditioning for the role of a character named Claire.

The ballet also sheds light on the overlooked internal struggles dancers face—a deeply personal topic for Mearns. It is her own words (thoughts and feelings collected in journals over several years about her personal life, mental health, and career) that Young used to create a script that she will recite while performing. “Seeing Sara bringing these different aspects of herself to the stage is going to be thrilling, especially for those in the audience who only know her work as a ballerina,” says Young.

Côté has worked with Mearns before as both a dance partner and choreographer, so for Mearns, he was the ideal creative partner to help her delve into such intimate psychological territory. “Collaborating with Sara Mearns on Don’t Go Home was both destabilizing and deeply inspiring—a creative process that pushed boundaries and demanded introspection,” says Côté.

When award-winning filmmaker Steven Cantor learned of Mearns’ new project, he reached out about documenting its creation. Mearns invited him to join their residency at Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York, where she and her team would make a rough draft of the piece. The resulting behind-the-scenes film, Stage Animal, had its streaming debut on March 18, as part of the ALL ARTS Past, Present, Future dance film festival, and can be viewed for free now on an ongoing basis; its broadcast premiere will be on April 1 at 7 pm EDT.

Mearns and Bolden III in a still from *Stage Animal*. Photo courtesy New York City Center.

For Mearns, the process of making such a personal piece—and having that process documented—was challenging at times. “But I know that it will be impactful,” she says. “And I think that’s what we need at this time in the arts. We need things that heal us, that make us feel real emotions.”

The second work on the NYCC program is Roberts’ Dance Is A Mother, set to music by composer Caroline Shaw and performed live by Bergamot Quartet and Raquel Acevedo Klein. The piece, made in Roberts’ trademark contemporary style, will be performed by Mearns and Roberts, along with Ailey’s Jeroboam Bozeman and freelancers Ghrai DeVore-Stokes and Anna Greenberg.

Though Mearns has been a “massive fan” of Roberts for years, they hadn’t worked together until this past summer, when they were both artists in residence at the Vail Dance Festival. “As soon as I got in the studio with him, I immediately knew I needed to work with him again on a bigger scale,” she says. “We’re like two peas in a pod.”

Roberts’ new work is inspired by both of their experiences as artists who have dedicated their lives to dance. “We’ve both had very long careers,” she explains. “And at some point it becomes a job. How do we get back to that feeling we had when we were 8 years old and we walked into the studio and we couldn’t wait to get in there and dance?”

Mearns has loved the collaborative rehearsal process and is looking forward to the performance. “That’s the payoff: to have a human, emotional experience with these other artists onstage,” she says. “To be able to just enjoy it out there and feel everything that’s going to happen.”