Megan Fairchild made her decision to retire from New York City Ballet three years ago. Of course she did. This is the woman who as a child gave herself gold stars for waking up at 8 a.m., brushing her teeth at 8:03 a.m., eating breakfast at 8:05 a.m. and going upstairs to read at 8:10 a.m. Fairchild loves a schedule.
Before she decided that retirement was the way to go, Fairchild, who turns 42 next month, had been experiencing a tinge of melancholy after performing certain ballets. She would think, “Will I ever dance that again?” It was a weird feeling. She did not enjoy it.
Her husband, who clearly knows his wife — and her capacity for planning — made a suggestion. Why not draw a line in the sand?
“I came up with a time that felt a little further than I wanted, so that I wouldn’t feel like, ‘Oh I wish I had one more year,’” she said in an interview in September.
Her children were on her mind. During her time at City Ballet, where she has been a principal since 2005, she gave birth to Tullie, now 8, and then the twins Gemma and Harlow, now 5. She wants her girls to have a memory of her onstage. “They’re really starting to become real people now with little brains,” she said. “But it’s also that I’m really craving to spend evenings and weekends with them.”
And of course, there is the inevitable age thing. “I am not interested in seeing the decline,” she said. “That is so depressing to me.” In Alexei Ratmansky’s “Voices” this spring, her partner was Charlie Klesa, a member of the corps de ballet. “I could have been his mother, and it would not have been a teen pregnancy,” she said. “That I can be done with, you know? I’m ready to just cheer for them and not pretend I’m still one of them.”
On May 24, Fairchild will deliver her farewell performance in “Coppélia.” She is still dancing magnificently. And everyone who has experienced her performing, in and out of the company, has the right to miss her. Fairchild, like all great ballerinas who have passed through the company, is practically a New York City landmark.
As Wendy Whelan, City Ballet’s associate artistic director, said: “She’s established as this golden person, but she also loves to pour it down into the group. So she’s fueling just the whole institution. I mean, every department loves her, everybody. A little piece of ourselves will go with her because we love her.”
She has maintained and elevated the breadth of her dancing for years, even as she earned a degree in math and economics from Fordham University and an M.B.A. from the Stern School of Business at New York University. She teaches at the company-affiliated School of American Ballet. She interned for City Ballet’s development department. She worked with the education department to bring fresh ideas to the company’s Family Saturdays series. She wrote a book.
“Her time management skills are bananas,” said Robbie Fairchild, her brother and a former City Ballet principal who has gone onto musical theater. He was struck by how all her non-dance experiences, especially motherhood, “opened up her artistry,” he said. “She always could do the steps, but this is like, this is dancing.”
In several interviews — from fall season to the days before her farewell performance — it was clear that Fairchild couldn’t be more happy with her decision. And stopping with “Coppélia” makes sense. As Swanilda, Fairchild plays a feisty, fun, whip-smart young woman. At 19, she learned the part as a backup; she ended up dancing four shows. Two were on the same day. She cried. She got through it. “Coppélia” became more than a ballet but a testament to her talent and perseverance.
Fairchild likes that Swanilda isn’t a diva ballerina or a princess — she’s a girl, a human being. “Totally no airs,” she said. “And that really is how I feel I am.”
From ballerina to expat
“I’m having the best time.” Fairchild said before the fall season. “I’ve just been happy. I thought I’d have some moments of being like, Oh, that’s going to be sad. Now that I’m here, I’m like, Woo-hoo!”
Part of that is having a plan, and that plan isn’t — to her surprise — a job, but a move. Fairchild and her French husband are relocating to Bordeaux, France, to raise their children. She doesn’t feel they can afford their lives in the United States. “We’re stuck in a two bedroom” in Jersey City, she said, and her children go to a French school. “We cannot get out of our two-bedroom if we pay for that school.”
Where could they get free French education? In France. “I want to get them fluent because a lot of their relatives and all of their cousins are French,” she said, “and I know how hard it is to learn with an older brain.”
When the idea of a move started to become a reality, she learned that the Balanchine Trust needed people to stage ballets in Europe. “I never would have thought I would want to do something like that,” she said, “but if it’s in Europe and it’s discovering how companies there are set up and functioning, that’s very interesting to me.”
Caretaker of masterpieces
At one point in her career, Fairchild wanted to be cast in new ballets, but it wasn’t happening. Peter Martins, formerly the director of City Ballet, told her that he relied on her for the more technical, classical repertory — he needed her fifth position.
“I was like, OK, come on: If I can do fifth position, I can also do some other things,” she said. She took a leave to perform in “On the Town” on Broadway, which led to a Tony nomination.
She talked about wanting to be in new ballets with Miranda Weese, a principal she admired. “She’d be like, ‘Honey, none of these ballets are something I’m proud of,” Fairchild said. “These are not the good things. You’re doing the good things.’”
Being able to work for the Balanchine Trust underlines the importance of that part of her career. She sees that she has been the caretaker of masterpieces. “I didn’t get to be there when Balanchine was there,” she said of the company. (He died in 1983.) “But it is an incredible honor to maintain these ballets and bring them to life again in a fresh way.”
So long, Sugar Plum
Fairchild has been dancing the Sugar Plum Fairy in “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” since she was 19. “I want to get off the stage right now,” she recalled thinking the first time she danced it.
But she was wonderful in that debut: young and radiant with the promise of things to come. She performed with Joaquín De Luz, who had more stage experience than she did, but was new to the company. “He had a certain demeanor about him that was helpful to me in just how he stood there and looked back at me,” she said.
For her last season, she performed with David Gabriel, who made his Cavalier debut. “Before we went out onstage, I was like, ‘OK, let’s start your journey,’” she said in December. “It feels fun to be able to use that to help someone have a first go at it in a pas de deux that I know how scary it can be.”
She called it a rite of passage: “It’s like the beginning of, ‘OK, if you can hack this, we’ll have a lot of faith in you.”
Fairchild has been saying goodbye to roles all year, which she has been documenting along the way in honest and perceptive Instagram posts that described her experiences in ballets — learning them, dancing in them and sharing them with others.
“I’m constantly checking in with myself,” she said. “Am I in denial? Am I really enjoying this last year? I don’t know exactly what that means. I guess I’m just ready. I feel like the way I’ve played my cards with it, I’m dealing very well emotionally with it.”
Heading into spring, foot trouble
At City Ballet, the studios have new dance floors. In turn, the stage has been feeling extra hard. Fairchild couldn’t put her left heel down on the floor the entire fall. Her right foot has been struggling since the beginning of the winter season.
“I’ve done a lot in the last year and I’ve done it in this way that’s like, last chance, go for it!,” she said before the spring season. “And so certain things maybe I wouldn’t have done so intensely. My body is paying for it. It’s paying.”
Her main focus going into spring, her last season, was just that: her body, making sure it was feeling strong and healthy. Dancing smart.
The final countdown: ‘Friday, Sunday, done’
Fairchild is not the sentimental type. “Personally, there’s more to me as a human being than just this,” she said. “So I’m not like aching inside about this.”
But others are acting as though she could — or should — be. “People were in the elevator or around like, ‘Ahhh, how are you feeling?’ Or like, ‘Hey …’ It was the first day of the season. I’m like, literally, guys, we need to calm down.”
She thought about the dancers she grew up admiring. “Would I be happy if they were still dancing?” she said. “No. I’d want them to go live their lives.”
After spending time with her daughters between seasons in March, they didn’t love it when her ballet schedule kicked back in. “My kids are like, ‘Wait, where are you going?’” Fairchild said. “‘Why aren’t you home?’”
She assured them that this was the last season. “Tullie’s like, ‘I cannot wait for the end of May. I cannot wait until you retire.’ I’m like, ‘Great. You can come out onstage and cheer, because you’re so glad that I’m done with it.’ She’s like so over it. So over it. And she loves it. She’s into it. But she wants her mom.”
Her final “Coppélia” performances will be on May 22 and 24, or as she puts it, “Friday, Sunday, done,” she said. “I’m getting my hair chopped on Tuesday. We are going to Disney World on Wednesday with my mom and my dad and my whole family. This is how I want to celebrate.”
After a bow, French lessons
Fairchild is choosing to celebrate her final days. All of her children will be at her last bow.
“I’m excited for them to see what it looks like with everyone out there,” Fairchild said. “They haven’t felt that feeling. They might be really shy. But at least they’ll get to be out there.”
The other night at home, after she performed “Divertimento No. 15,” Tullie, her oldest, decided to give Fairchild a French lesson. “She was like, ‘OK the sound oi: What words have that sound?’ She was playing teacher and drinking from the water bottle, and I was just sitting there drinking my glass of wine.”
She’s never bored when she hangs out with her girls. “I don’t like to be alone, and I’m very much not alone,” she said. “So to not be at work is fine.”
Her ship has sailed and that’s more than fine. “I feel like I’m at the exact age I want to be leaving,” she said. “I have an immense amount of peace about this whole thing. I’m not having nightmares. I’m like completely just excited — excited to retire, excited to experience the retirement, excited for the next steps, excited about who I will be with all of this experience and what I’ll do in the world with that! You know? So I’m having fun.”
Gia Kourlas is the dance critic for The Times. She writes reviews, essays and feature articles and works on a range of stories.
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