Hello, dance friends. I’m Margaret Fuhrer, editor and producer of The Dance Edit newsletter and podcast. Welcome to the eighth episode of The Dance Edit Extra!

This week we have an artist who is both one of my favorite ballerinas and one of my favorite podcasters: New York City Ballet principal Megan Fairchild, who for a long time hosted the advice podcast Ask Megan. She’s one of those dancers who, when she’s onstage, she puts you at ease—you never feel worried about her, because her dancing is so undeniably solid. In the right role, she can also be extremely funny, and as you’ll hear in her interview, that’s true offstage, too. But the confidence that she projects when she’s performing didn’t necessarily come naturally to her. And dealing with her own sometimes-crippling perfectionism, and the performance anxiety that came with it, is something that Megan addresses in her new book The Ballerina Mindset, which is full of advice that she hopes will help other dancers—and non-dancers, too—stay mentally healthy in high-pressure environments.

I’m excited for you all to hear her insights. So, without further ado, here’s Megan!

[pause]

Margaret Fuhrer:
I am very excited now to be joined by ballerina and newly-minted book author Megan Fairchild. Hi Megan! Thank you so much for joining today.

Megan Fairchild:
Thank you. Happy to be here.

Margaret Fuhrer:
I’m so glad you could stop by the podcast because you have a lot to talk about these days. Megan is, of course, a longtime principal dancer with New York City Ballet, where she recently returned to the stage after that long pandemic hiatus. During that hiatus, she gave birth to twins—she’s now a mom of three. So she is one of the busiest… I have written here “busiest dancers,” but just busiest people, around, period.

Megan Fairchild:
Yeah! [laughter]

Margaret Fuhrer:
But the particular reason we’re talking right now is because she also has a new book baby, as I alluded to before. It’s called The Ballerina Mindset: How To Protect Your Mental Health While Striving For Excellence. It’s out now from Penguin Books. In it, she talks a whole lot about how to find balance even as you navigate an incredibly competitive field. I know that dancer mental health is a topic that’s been at the forefront of all of our minds recently. So I’m excited to get into that.

But first, because it’s a Dance Edit Extra tradition, I’m wondering if we could rewind to the beginning of your story, your early days studying dance. You don’t have to tell your whole training path, but in a bigger picture sense, why did you first fall in love with dance? What about it hooked you?

Megan Fairchild:
Wow, that’s a great question. I don’t have a moment where I didn’t like it. I just was always moving and my mom was like, “Okay, great. We’ll put her over here.” I went into my first tap class, and I was like four and a half. I literally remember them moving my foot forwards and backwards with my tap shoe and teaching me a shuffle. I don’t know, it’s just something I never questioned.

It is something, every year, as I got older and more into my teen years, every new step of the way, I would ask myself, “Are you still enjoying this?” And check in. And I always was, even as it got more competitive. But it’s just always been a part of my life. I can’t even identify a time when it wasn’t something I was enjoying doing.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. It’s just inborn. I mean, I guess, can you talk a little more specifically about, during those check-ins, what was it that you were connecting to? What were the things about dance that were keeping you engaged?

Megan Fairchild:
I mean, I could speak more the reasons why I know a lot of people decide it’s not for them, like, “Is this work really worth it? Am I getting anything out of it?” For me, all of the discipline and the intensity of the competition, even just summer programs and stuff, that turned out to be fun for me. If that hadn’t been fun, if the journey hadn’t been fun along the way, I really don’t think I would have ended up here. This has not been something that has been grueling for me, that has not been something that I had to push myself through when I wasn’t really enjoying it.

My mom always said I never didn’t want to go to dance. I’ve always enjoyed the parts of it that might make others shy away. I think that’s having lots of attention on you, having that competitive situation. I tend to dance my best when someone important is watching. And that’s a good thing. That’s something where I was like, “Okay, well, this part is fun for me.”

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah, I mean, I guess you have to love all those aspects of it to make it through, because it is so hard. It is such a hard path.

Megan Fairchild:
Yeah.

Margaret Fuhrer:
I want to discuss the early days of your career a little now, because in your book, you talk quite a bit about that period of your life, when you were figuring everything out. When you first joined City Ballet, you were put into a ton of big roles very quickly. It was that “throw her in the deep end” approach that I think the company is actually infamous for—if they like you, you’re going out.

Megan Fairchild:
Yeah.

Margaret Fuhrer:
As a 17 year old, how did you deal with that, and how did you not deal with that? What was that like for you?

Megan Fairchild:
It started when I was… Well, yeah, when I was 18, I started being put in some things that were high-pressure. I really didn’t take to it as I would hope some of my students today might. That’s why I wrote the book. It’s like I look back and I’m like, after checking in all those years and auditioning for summer courses and making sure I was enjoying it, I got into that company life and the pressures of performing a really hard role, in that dynamic of all the people in the company hoping for that part and watching you and seeing how you do it. That’s what I really struggled with.

I think it’s also, being young and getting something in a company, it’s not just like you’re against your fellow students that are the same age. You’re against people that are 10 years older than you, that are like, “Hey, I have been here for years, and you just suddenly got that part out of nothing?” And so, that’s the pressure I really struggled with, was feeling like I got more than my fair share really early. I wanted people to not feel bad that they didn’t get it. I wanted to make it worth everyone’s while that I’d been given this opportunity. That was the pressure I felt.

It was a lot of crying and a lot of just learning how to figure it out. That’s why I wrote this book, because looking back, it’s just like, “Wow, where I am today is so drastically different from where I started out.” And I can’t help but share these nuggets of wisdom that I’ve come to know along the way.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Thank you for answering the question that I should have led with, which is “Why did you feel compelled to write this book?” Like a true podcaster, you’re doing it for me. [laughter] I know, it’s interesting because you were saying that you love the discipline aspect of it. You said, in your book, you love the technique side. You love that everyday being in the classroom work.

Megan Fairchild:
Yeah.

Margaret Fuhrer:
So when you’re not the kind of dancer who lives for the stage, it must be even more complicated then to be given all these big performance roles, to enter this environment where that’s the whole end point, is to get that time on stage. And it’s like, “But I just want to work on my technique!”

Megan Fairchild:
I just wanted to do some big corps ballets and be a part of the big experience! I was not in Serenade. I was not in Stars and Stripes. I didn’t get to do these big corps experiences, because at that time, my height was just too extreme. Right now, all of the people my height in the company are doing all those big ballets. They get to do Glass Pieces and West Side Story, but I was never in those mainstream New York City Ballet corps ballets. So I think it was a mixture of that: I had little stage time, and then, the time that I was put out there, I was just put out in the front. And I’m like, “Hey, wait a minute, people. I just want to stand with everyone else for a minute and get my bearings.”

But I’ve always loved performing. I grew up doing dance competitions from a young age, and that’s great performance experience. And then, the usual, like spring recital kind of things. Those were never stressful. It was just until I got into that company life, where you’re in competition with two decades of talent and suddenly performing in a way that’s just written about in the New York Times and for thousands of people that know what they’re watching—I think that’s what I wasn’t prepared for. I would have really enjoyed a little more time to just figure out who I was as a professional dancer before I was tasked with the difficult technical roles I had to do. And so, yeah—dancing in the spring recital’s completely different than that company pressure, right?

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. I know. I didn’t mean to imply that you didn’t love performing. Of course it’s great to be on stage. But yeah, completely different scope, completely different scale.

Megan Fairchild:
Completely. Yeah. I think everyone deserves to get to adjust in a regular manner and not be thrown into it. While it might look fun that I got promoted at 20 as a principal, I used to tell my boss, Peter Martins, I used to say like, “That was really not fun for me. I think that was a disadvantage for me.” I had to do a lot of work to get over the trauma of that and to make those performances even possible. I was barely treading water for a lot of years, I felt.

Margaret Fuhrer:
In your book, you talk about how you figured out ways to get through that, the solutions that you were able to figure out as you grew up and grew into yourself as a dancer—and especially things that related to performance anxiety. You regularly describe yourself as a perfectionist, and I think there’s this pretty well-documented thing in ballet where perfectionists are drawn to it because it emphasizes precision and control. But that personality type is then also prone to worrying, prone to anxiety. And since actually achieving perfection or complete control onstage is impossible…

Megan Fairchild:
And devastation when it’s not perfect, right?

Margaret Fuhrer:
Exactly. Yeah. It can lead to that cycle where you’re striving for something that’s unattainable and then experiencing disappointment and anxiety when it doesn’t happen.

Megan Fairchild:
Yeah. And then, suddenly the experience is miserable. I guess I got to a point where it was like, “I’ve got to learn how to enjoy this extreme environment.” Basically, every chapter deals with this in one way or the other. But what I came to realize is that nothing can replace experience. And so, while you’re a young dancer and you’re seeing all these older dancers have it figured out, there’s no way to just jump ahead to that place in line. You’ve got to pay the dues and have some painful performances for a while. And so, that was a part of it. I learned it was just going to get better as time went on and I was immersed and desensitized to the stress of what it is to be doing a principal role.

And then, also, something I learned when I turned 30, I started learning how to meditate. I learned transcendental meditation at the suggestion of the head of the corps de ballet of New York City Ballet. Someone at work suggests something and you look up to them, you’ll try anything to make anything in life easier.

Ever since that moment in time, I’ve felt like I’ve really just enjoyed performing in a completely different way, where I’m not analyzing while I’m making choices. I’m not even making choices, I’m just being and existing in the music. And so, that’s just been really refreshing. It takes a lot of energy out of you to be stressed out while you’re dancing. So finding that calm zone and being able to stay there and having that mental rigor that you get from meditation, that mental strength—I wish that I learned in when I was 14.

Margaret Fuhrer:
A part of me wishes they just made some sort of meditation practice a part of dance training, especially ballet training.

Megan Fairchild:
Completely.

Margaret Fuhrer:
It feels to me like I’ve talked to a bunch of dancers about this, who are into meditation, and describe, I mean, just as you have, the way it completely frees you to be in the present moment in a way that… I mean, especially like, yeah, ballet dancers, we tend to be inside our heads a lot in a way that just makes performing at your optimal level almost impossible.

Megan Fairchild:
Right. I think it really goes to what we do. Like you rehearse, rehearse, rehearse till you have that sweet spot of perfection. And then you’re trying to implement that in performance. You have to get out of your head in order to be able to execute that best version of what you’ve worked so hard on. And so, I think that’s what I had found devastating for a while, was working so hard and then sometimes having shows where it didn’t pay off, and trying to figure out why. It’s like, okay, you do the rehearsal for the physical training, but then you’ve got to do something else with the brain, so that in that moment of performance, you’re not thinking, “Oh, here’s that step I practiced like 500 times and I hope I can do it in the show.” You have to be completely past that in your head mentally in order to successfully execute that step you’ve worked so hard on. That’s what meditation really gives me.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Talking about doing something else with your brain: I love the story that you tell in the book, and I’d never heard this before, about when you were doing that live performance of The Nutcracker for PBS. You’re dancing the Sugar Plum Fairy and in your head the whole time you’re singing “Hotel California” in time with the Tchaikovsky score. I mean, can you talk about, first of all, that moment, just because it’s a great story, and then also some of those other times when you were in those moments, learning to cope with that kind of pressure?

Megan Fairchild:
For that performance, it was live for PBS, one night on TV, telecast everywhere, and then live the other night to be broadcast in movie theaters around the world.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Huge!

Megan Fairchild:
I mean, two nights in a row, it’s like execute this pas de deux perfectly that has a lot of little moments that could go wrong and sometimes do. And so I did a lot of mental training for that. Imagery at that time was something I was really into, and different colors and stuff, and trying to just help my energy stay positive. But in that moment, just I was like, “Oh God, oh God, I’m totally going to lose my cool here.” I just went to a happy place and I latched on to it.

I think that I sang it in time with the music. I mean, I almost feel a little embarrassed to admit that I was not performing in that moment to the beautiful Tchaikovsky music. I had classic rock in my head. But it was just the only way I could… In that moment, I needed to not realize the moment at all. I was so just feeling that pressure of, “Okay, this is for posterity. This is being filmed.” I needed to just go on autopilot almost. And so, that’s how I did it. It’s almost like I meditated while I was performing.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. It’s just a different type of meditation. It’s classic rock meditation.

Megan Fairchild:
Yeah. Yeah. When you do your best performance, you are doing a form of meditation where you’re getting lost in that focus of it and the music is the mantra. And so, yeah, my mantra that night was “Hotel California,” and it went well. I was so proud of my shows. I remember being like, “I can finish happy now.” I mean, I was only like 30 something, 30, maybe 28, 29. But I was like, “I can really hang my hat on those. I’m very pleased with how that went.” So thank God I did not fall or embarrass myself in front of all of those cameras watching. Now my daughter gets to watch that. I have it on DVD.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Oh, that’s funny. What is that like, when she’s watching you perform? How does she feel about it?

Megan Fairchild:
Well, she is just like, “Yeah.” She probably thinks all moms do the Sugar Plum Fairy.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Of course. [laughter]

Megan Fairchild:
When she hears the variation music, she goes, “Oh, momma’s music.” Really cute. So I love that she likes it. I love that she knows Swan Lake., she knows The Nutcracker, and that she knows the music. I did a gig the other day and I told her, “Oh, I did something from Swan Lake.” And so she goes, “[humming Swan Lake music].” She starts singing it. I was so proud. I don’t care if she dances, but I’m just really tickled and happy that she will have that kind of beautiful music in her life.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. She’s got the music in her.

Coming back to the bigger picture idea of perfectionism, because it’s a double-edged sword. It can also be really an asset. It’s not just something to be dealt with. It sounds like during your role on Broadway in On the Town, that time really helped you figure out how to harness your perfectionism in a productive way.

Megan Fairchild:
Completely.

Margaret Fuhrer:
And also give you some space from ballet that seemed like helped you grow artistically.

Megan Fairchild:
I feel very lucky that I had a moment away, because it’s such an insular world, SAB and New York City Ballet. Not many people get to have a little artistic moment away. That’s as long as I got to take, so that was really cool.

What I loved about it was that I got to be around other types of artists. I wasn’t just around other dancers. I was around singers, actors. I was sharing the stage with Jackie Hoffman, who’s a comedian, and she was supposed to be my singing teacher. Hearing how her and another comedian in the show, like they would talk backstage—a dancer would talk backstage and be like, “Oh, I fell out of my turn, dah, dah, dah. I didn’t hit this.” And comedians backstage, and all they’re talking about is, “I didn’t get a laugh. I didn’t get a laugh tonight.” As intense as we are about the things that we care about, they’re like that. And so, to be in that world and realize, “Oh, I’m an artist, just like all of these other people I admire, just in a different way,” I felt really seen, although different. I just learned to appreciate what we do as artists in general and how to put on a show. Which was so fun.

Margaret Fuhrer:
You talk in the book about how at the end of On the Town, the end of that run, your first marriage to a fellow dancer fell apart. Which you describe in your book as really your first failure, your first major failure. I think sometimes artists are hesitant to talk about their personal lives, but I deeply appreciated your candor in that section.

Megan Fairchild:
Thank you.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Because what’s happening to us off stage affects who we are as performers too.

Megan Fairchild:
Completely.

Margaret Fuhrer:
What did going through that divorce help you learn about yourself as a person, and also as an artist?

Megan Fairchild:
I think up until then, everything had just always gone my way. I had gotten into all of the summer programs I wanted to, and I got the scholarships, and I got into New York City Ballet. Then I got the big parts. And while those were stressful, I always got what anybody might really want. So in a way I had this attitude, like, “Well, if you work hard for anything and you set yourself up right, you can get anything done. If it’s not happening for you, it’s because you didn’t set it up right.”

I was on my lofty little pedestal, thinking that life was so easy and so straightforward. And in a way, that caused me to not be a very empathetic person to people when situations were difficult. And then I had this situation where I’m like, “Wait.” I was like, “How did I even get here? I set myself up always so that this kind of thing wouldn’t happen to me, and look, here I am.” And so, it was a wonderful moment for me. A friend lent me a book, I think it was called like Broken Open or something. It was like, an egg was cracked, like you couldn’t put it back together. Now I was like one of everybody else in the world. I felt so united to the rest of the universe and all of the possible foibles we all have. I wasn’t on my pedestal anymore. I was now connected in a way that I knew that we all share, that, okay, I’m not superior because I’ve been successful. I’ve been lucky. And I am just like anyone else out there trying for things, and sometimes it doesn’t work out.

And so, as horrible as it was, I felt really comforted. I really felt the community in the universe supporting me, and that got me through it. I’ve tried to maintain that feeling of connection and empathy to others’ experiences ever since then, because, it’s like, of course, you’re going to think everything’s so easy until it’s not. And so, I’m grateful for that time. If I didn’t have that time, I probably wouldn’t have grown as an artist in the ways that I have.

Also, I’m just a person that doesn’t believe in regrets. I spent a lot of my life with that person, and I would go over it for a long time, like, “I can’t believe that I spent like 13 years with someone, where I’m trying to delete all of the photos of that time of my life.” That was 13 years of my life. And so, I had to get to a point where—my husband now has really helped me embrace that if I didn’t go through that, I wouldn’t be the person I am today, and I wouldn’t have found him, and we wouldn’t have all of our beautiful children.

So, as horrible as a journey might be, that end result, where you know you’re in the right place in the world, is worth it. That’s why I want to share about it, because I think I learned a lot.

Margaret Fuhrer:
I love that connection, that giving yourself permission to fail makes you a more empathetic person, like, acknowledgement of your own flaws makes you much more empathetic about others’.

Megan Fairchild:
Because I think it’s easy for everyone to be like, “Yeah, we’re humans and we make mistakes.” But when it’s you making a mistake, you’re like, “Well, that’s not possible. I don’t do that,” as a perfectionist. And so, to actually have to really experience the depths of some type of failure was good for me.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Let’s bring the conversation a little closer to the present now, because I was excited to talk to you partly because you are a fellow podcaster. You had an advice podcast for a while called Ask Megan. And then, during the pandemic, you started a video interview series called Conversations With Megan, where you talked with other dance artists. I started thinking of it as, instead of Ask Megan, it’s Megan Asks.

Megan Fairchild:
I was going to name it that for a bit, but I didn’t even know if my other thing had caught on enough! [laughter] But yeah, that’s really how I felt it was.

Margaret Fuhrer:
What inspired that whole series? Why did it feel like the right moment for that particular kind of thing?

Megan Fairchild:
I wanted to stay engaged in my industry. I felt so far away from it. At that time, I was in Utah and we were going for walks in the mountains every day. I was just so far away from what we do. I did the first one with Skylar Brandt because I had just always admired her, and she had such a unique way of training. And I wanted to cross company…

Margaret Fuhrer:
Company lines?

Megan Fairchild:
Yeah. So that’s why I chose her. And I really like… The first couple ones, I don’t even know what I’m doing. Then I’ve talked to some friends and it’s just very casual. Then it was like, “Oh, wow, people really like this.” So then I tried to like get a little bit more thoughtful about what people might want to hear.

I don’t know, I just enjoyed every minute of it. I realized I am a really good talker. I know that I’m a really good talker, because there’s a couple people in the company that are always telling me like, “Shh.” In company class, you cannot shut me up. The poor people that are teaching company class, I’m like… Daniel Albrecht and I, we have conversations while we’re doing the first combination at barre and across from us people are like, “Shut up!” [laughter] I guess I don’t know how much my voice carries.

But I just love connecting with people. That’s why I really love what I do as a professional. I love the daily connection with my colleagues. And so, that’s the way I continued that, and it was really fun.

I would die to do an episode every week, but it’s just not in my bandwidth right now. But I hope to continue it when I have some time here and there, because I think that there’s definitely a hunger for that kind of behind the scenes conversation from dancer to dancer, or artist to artist.

So, yeah, I just had fun with it. It wasn’t anything anyone told me to do. I just spontaneously was like, “I need to make some content.”

Margaret Fuhrer:
Well, yeah, you were doing the part of dancing that you were missing—you were filling in that gap, because those are the conversations that you would be having in person. But the rest of us don’t ever get to hear these conversations. So yeah, we love that insider view.

Megan Fairchild:
Totally. Totally.

Margaret Fuhrer:
More pandemic questions here. I mean, trying to get back on stage after having twins, as you recently did, in the middle of a pandemic, it’s an almost inconceivable kind of journey. And you did it. You’re here.

Megan Fairchild:
Yeah. If you had told me that I was going to have to go through that, I mean, I would have slapped you. It would have just been devastating if I heard of it before it happened. But like we all were, just trying to find a way to survive and stay happy, for me, it was really like, “I can’t get burnout.” I know that I, having gone to Broadway, having had my first child, I knew that I was capable of the retraining part. But what I did not know about was, am I capable of this mental game of waiting until we can come back?

It got a couple of months in and I was really raring to go, like, “If we’re not back yet, I’m not going to wait all this time and then wish that I had had another baby during this time.” Actually, I called my boss and I was like, “What are you thinking? What is the timing of this looking like?” He was uncertain for even the beginning of 202[1]. Once I heard him say that, I was like, “I’m going to try to get pregnant.” Just like, “I don’t want to wait all this time, and then wish that I had taken this time to do that. I’m not going to wait a whole pandemic and then be like, “Oh, whoops, Tullie needs a sibling before it’s too late.” I just didn’t want to take two years and a half years out of my life. That made me feel better. It was a way for me to justify the pandemic. I tried to make use of the time.

Margaret Fuhrer:
You made the most productive use. I mean, literally productive.

Megan Fairchild:
Yeah. [laughter]

Margaret Fuhrer:
I mean, and it must have been so intense to make your post-baby comeback at the same time that the entire company was coming back from that.

Megan Fairchild:
It was intense, but it was also nicely hidden. Suddenly I got a situation going for me where everyone was coming back from a kind of maternity leave with me. I didn’t feel alone. We were all training to come back. I had my own particular challenges with my body that I was working on, but everyone was in that mindset already. We had a New York City Ballet summer program, basically.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. Ballet bootcamp.

Megan Fairchild:
It was really perfect. It was probably easier than the first time I came back. Yeah.

Margaret Fuhrer:
I was lucky enough to see that first performance back where you did Symphony in C first movement. I mean, the whole company danced like they were on fire, just…the gratitude and the hunger on that stage!

Megan Fairchild:
I could not feel my legs the whole first—I mean, I finally was in my body for the finale, but Harrison Ball and I, he did third movement, we talked about it afterwards, like we couldn’t feel our body. It was the weirdest feeling. So it was just so intense.

And then, after, I don’t know if you saw, but I full-on sobbed. Before the curtain even was finally down, I just heard you guys. I heard the audience and I didn’t know it was in me to this release of all of this pent up frustration of this time and not knowing if… It’s stressful to get pregnant with twins. You don’t know if you’re going to be able to be a ballet dancer again, honestly. So just getting back to that moment and being there and being connected with the audience, it was just so much all at once. I couldn’t keep it in. Yeah.

Margaret Fuhrer:
It was like the whole audience crying, everybody on stage crying. Yeah, it was so much. It was funny too, because I went to that performance. I was like, “Oh, they programmed Serenade first, we’re all going to cry.” And of course, there was some crying. But it was really the end of the show, the end of Symphony in C, that was what did it. Seeing the whole company out there.

Megan Fairchild:
Yeah. Totally.

Margaret Fuhrer:
You talk at the end of your book about how ballet is incredible, but life has to be about more than ballet. Which I know is part of why you got your undergrad degree and now you’re getting your MBA. You were saying “bandwidth” earlier, I was like, “Oh, spoken like an MBA student!” But so, I guess, first of all, what’s still on your ballet bucket list, and then what non-dance avenues are you excited to explore down the road?

Megan Fairchild:
My ballet bucket list. I don’t know. In general—I think I might talk about this in my book. I don’t like to say I want to do this or that, because I don’t want to set myself up for disappointment if it doesn’t happen. I just like being pleasantly surprised if something comes my way I wasn’t expecting. I mean, it’s the way I manage my expectations, because I’m not in control of casting.

I have ballets that I would love to do, but I’m probably not the most right person for them, so I’m not going to even mention them. I really get to do the cream of the crop of our company, and it’s such a blessing to do that. I am finding it very ironic that I’m getting to do more new things as I’ve had children. My life is more packed than ever and now they want me to stay and work on some new choreography. I’m like, “Now?” Of course, I’m going to say yes because I’ve always wanted to be in new pieces. And so, I’m having a little career resurgence at the end.

I had my partner who’s retired, that I danced with for a long time, Joaquin [De Luz]. And we have a new director. So it’s a refreshing time for me and my career, to be just seen in a little bit of a different light. And I’m enjoying that. I got to Polyphonia in California, before the pandemic; In G, I did—I never would have thought I would have done those ballets, because they’ve gone the entire time I’ve been in the company. I never even was close to understudying them and they just show up out the blue.

It’s good to have goals, everybody, but it also is really wonderful when you just work on being the best version of yourself and then put yourself forward, let everyone know what that is, and hope that they see it too.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. It’s also been interesting—I feel like, since Joaquin left, they’ve almost been auditioning new go-to partners for you, trying to figure out who it is.

Megan Fairchild:
Hey, I’m happy to have a different partner every night. I really love it. It was a lot to be with one person. I think Joaquin and I both felt that a little bit at times. We really have a fondness for each other, but I think at times we both felt a little bit limited.

There is something nice in switching partners, because who you’re dancing opposite of, they’re going to bring out a quality in you. And each person brings out a different quality. Joaquin brought out an incredibly classical quality in me, because he’s incredibly classical. That’s why it’s fun to have that collaboration with the partner. I miss Joaquin terribly, but I’m also enjoying this time, which I was nervous about. I was like, “What am I going to do when he’s gone?” And now I’m having fun.

Margaret Fuhrer:
How about beyond ballet? I mean, you’re getting your MBA. What are your longer-term hopes, thoughts, goals?

Megan Fairchild:
Again, I like to keep it vague. I say I’m going to get my MBA because I would love to be in charge of something in our industry someday, whether it’s a school, whether it’s a company. If there are too many candidates for things that are coming available, when I’m ready for them, then I have my MBA to go. I could go into the for-profit world, or I could work for The Ford Foundation. Or, I don’t know—my MBA just gives me an incredible amount of opportunities.

What I’ve realized…I’m not going for the networking. A lot of people are getting MBAs so they’ll have that network. What I’ve realized is, getting to say, “I’ve got an MBA from NYU,” it really speaks to a board of directors at the ballet, because they all have those degrees. So whether that helps me get a job in this industry or a job in their companies, I really think I just feel safer having that security and knowing that I’ve got lots of options.

I have no idea what it will end up being that I do. But I’ve always thought, “Okay, I’ve used my body for all of this time. I want to use my brain for the second half of my working life.” I can’t wait to sit at the desk and have a cute little skirt pantsuit thing or whatever, like a blazer and a pencil skirt. That’s going to be my next costume. [laughter] Something like that. Something where I get to use another aspect of myself. It’s not just the physical part and the performing. I feel like I have a lot more to me to offer.

Margaret Fuhrer:
I’m so glad you mentioned, too, this whole idea of speaking the board’s language. Because, I mean, in the arts world, it’s such an important skill. It’s something that I think a lot of times, dancers—these incredible dancers who come into these arts admin jobs, and they have so much to bring to the table artistically, but maybe they’re not as prepared on the other side of things. So it’s refreshing to hear that you’re going to know all of that. You’re going to know that language.

Megan Fairchild:
I am definitely the only dancer at Stern at NYU right now. Whenever we have to talk about our own work experience in the classroom, I’m like, “Okay, here it goes, everybody. I’m the odd one here,” and explain what I do. But it’s super interesting to them. I’ve gotten over the nerves of being the odd man out. Nothing’s over my head.

I think all dancers should know we’re really smart in what we have to do and manage, all of the things that we simultaneously juggle while we’re doing what we do. We can be exceptional in other fields. Just being able to be in an MBA class and feel confident… I was walking out of school this morning and I was like, “I just love that I don’t feel nervous speaking up in this environment.” That is everything to me. I used to when I was first having these classes. So I’ve grown a lot in that way, where I am not shaking when I hear my voice.

As dancers, we’re always so quiet, so I think it’s great for dancers to not just be so one-sided. How formidable can we be if we have all these other facets to our talent? Like, we’re not just dancers. Most times, dancers are also usually very intelligent. Let’s flesh that out and let’s conquer the world.

Margaret Fuhrer:
See, now you’re starting to sound like a teacher, which you are.

Megan Fairchild:
Yeah.

Margaret Fuhrer:
The way I’m asking these questions…it’s not your job to fix all of ballet. You’re an artist inside of it. But as someone who is teaching and helping to shape the next generation of dancers, how do you try to create an emotionally and mentally healthy environment for your students?

Megan Fairchild:
That’s a very good question. It’s something that I’ve really been passionate about, that aspect of being a teacher. I don’t think that many teachers I had were talking about, “How are you feeling?” And I did a lot of that for my students during the pandemic. I’m on the faculty at SAB. I think it was unusual for them too. Even the younger students, I was checking in with them. We went around the zoom room and I was like, “Okay”—they weren’t used to talking, but I really was like, “I can’t just speak to a screen. We need to come together and feel connected in this time. It’s good for you. It’s good for me.” So I was having them share each day, something different. We’d take 10 minutes out of class, because you can’t really jump in the space anyways. It was like, “Can everybody share something they’ve started doing in this time that’s making them handle it better, or something that’s making them feel better?”

So these 13, 14 year olds are going around, and some don’t even want to participate. And then others are like, “I’ve been doing this with my family every day and it makes me feel good.” And someone else was like, “I’ve started doing facials.” I was just that, if everybody understands that we’re all in the same experience, that’s something that I feel very passionate about at that level, especially as a teenager and trying to be in a competitive environment. You’re feeling so self-conscious, but so is everybody else. They’re feeling all of the emotions you’re feeling, but a lot of them just don’t talk about it. And so, to be able to realize we’re all in this same difficult experience together, and, “How’s so-and-so dealing with it? Oh, that’s an idea I never thought of before”—that was something fun that I just tried to do.

In general, when I’m teaching the technical things, I try to give reasons for why you want to apply a correction. “It’s not to please me. This is for your benefit. And I’ll tell you why when you get to the step.” Or, “This translates into this. It’s not just knees out to the side. If my knees are out to the side, then my hips are up. It’s a whole domino effect of benefits for you. What it ends up being is you’re going to do a lot of pirouettes.” Speaking their language. Like, what do you want to be good at when you’re a young student? You want to turn well. You want to jump well. Zeroing down the corrections to the kind of thing that will speak to them.

It’s a focus that I like to have, because I went through a lot of times, even as a young professional, like, okay, someone’s screaming the same correction to me, but I just don’t… Why? Yeah, I want to be better, but this one specific angle of the correction, I’m not gaining anything out of it. Can we rephrase it so that I’m, A, motivated to do it, and, B, it’s helping me? So I try to think about those experiences when I’m teaching.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Those are really the central lessons of your book too. It’s all about empathy and it’s all about internal motivation, and for coming from a healthy place, as opposed to…

Megan Fairchild:
Totally.

Margaret Fuhrer:
… external competitive motivation. Yeah.

Megan Fairchild:
Totally. Exactly.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Megan, I’ve kept you over time. Thank you so much for talking today. It was really, really great to hear your perspective. Everybody, you can read it more of her perspective in The Ballerina Mindset, which is out now. We have all the links in the show notes. And merde for Nutcracker! Looking forward to seeing you onstage.

Megan Fairchild:
Thank you! Thank you. It’s been such a pleasure.
[pause]

Thanks again to Megan, who by the way will be dancing the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker tonight, the 11th! So that merde at the end there was well-timed. And as promised, we have lots of information about her book in our show notes, too.

Thanks again to all of you for subscribing to The Dance Edit Extra. I’ll see you back here for our next episode in just under two weeks—the next installment will drop not two Saturdays from now, which would be Christmas Day, but instead one day earlier, on Christmas Eve—just a heads-up there. Enjoy your weekend, everyone!