Sara Mearns Talks city.ballet.
Can’t get enough of
city.ballet.? Every Monday, we’ll be posting a new interview with a different cast member from the AOL On docu-series about New York City Ballet. This week, we talk to principal Sara Mearns.
Getting a peek at the day-to-day workings of any ballet company is a treat. But access to New York City Ballet classes and rehearsals is especially rare, because the company is fiercely protective of their sanctity. So it took the company dancers some time to adjust to the presence of the city.ballet. cameras.
“In the beginning we were all kind of shocked, because normally classes are a very private thing for us,” says principal dancer Sara Mearns. “But they were respectful of us and our space, and they were only around for a certain amount of time—the right amount of time. Eventually it came to feel normal for there to be cameras around.”
So normal, in fact, that Mearns found herself digging very deep during her interview sessions. “You start just thinking out loud, and at first there’s an anxiety about it, but in the end that’s a good thing—you get comfortable enough to say things you wouldn’t normally say,” she says. “We want our fans to understand us. We want them to know that we’re not crazy—we’re regular people who happen to have very unusual lives.”
Watch the full city.ballet. series at dancemagazine.com.
