How Sugar Plum Fairy Sara Mearns Keeps Dancing

Friday, 10 a.m. and Sarah Mearns is in her dressing room, wearing a purple chunky knit sweater, her hair down, tousled and thrown to one side. Her laid-back appearance is not what one would expect from the main ballerina of The Nutcracker; she looks comfortable in the space, but more importantly, in her skin. It wasn't always like this.

After gradually losing her hearing over the course of a decade and experiencing a serious bout of depression in 2021, Mearns says she has finally reached the place of “who I want to be” as a woman and as an artist. But for the South Carolina native, it was a journey with a capital J.

Mearns was only three years old when her mother sent her to classes. “I was kicking and screaming walking into the studio,” she tells POPSUGAR. But somewhere along the way, she fell in love with the skill, emotion, technique and vulnerability of dance. Mearns compares herself to many other female athletes in that “once they start playing the sport they love, there is nothing else.” She adds, “That’s what dance was for me.” From age 12 to 15, she attended summer classes at the School of American Ballet in New York, striving to stand out.

“It was four summer courses and at the end of the last summer course they didn’t ask me to stay for the whole year. That's usually what they do when they want to keep the brightest students in school year-round,” Mearns explains. So, she stated her position: “I went to them and basically asked if I could stay because I told the teacher that if I went back to South Carolina, that was it. It's like it's all over for me… I won't dance anymore and there's nothing professional for me there and that's the end of the road. I was 15 and I told them this.”

However, her persistence paid off and the school found her a place and a partial scholarship to attend the year-long training program. Mearns spent the next few years in the industry trying to prove herself at various ballet studios in New York and San Francisco.

“I didn’t consider myself one of those dancers who had big extensions, big jumps, feet and a perfect body. I had none of this. But I knew I could dance circles around people in the studio,” she says. “I could actually move.”

With this confidence, Mearns returned to the city and eventually landed a student position with the New York City Ballet in 2003. The following year she joined the company as a member of the corps de ballet. In 2006, at the age of 18, she performed as a soloist in Swan Lake, which she credits with changing the trajectory of her career. “It only takes one chance to discover everything in your world. And then you just do it,” Mearns says. By 2008, she was promoted to principal dancer, the highest rank in a professional ballet company.

About six years later, another moment unexpectedly changed the trajectory of her career. While in Brazil, Mearns attended a carnival rehearsal in a metal gym, listening to an hour-long beat of over 100 drums. When she left, she could not hear, and this persisted for several days, but when she went to see a doctor in New York, her fears subsided and she was told not to worry: “It’s just hearing loss and low register. It's OK”.

When The COVID pandemic has begunMearns realized how wrong her doctor was. “That's when it all really hit me because I couldn't see anyone's mouths and I couldn't hear them because of the masks,” she says. Suddenly she noticed how loud her televisions were, that she was missing bits of conversation and punchlines, the music in dance studios seemed incredibly quiet, and she began asking her partners to translate instructions and critiques that were given in rehearsals.

Then, when the performances stopped, her mental health really started to suffer. For many artists and performers, the pandemic signaled one of two things: a much-needed break or a potential career end, Mearns said. Mearns took the second approach. “The way I see it, I'm losing some of the best years of my career in my prime when I was about 30. And I can't stop, I have to keep going. I have to do whatever job is available to me in all the institutions in New York,” she says. Mearns turned her second bedroom into a studio, installing barre and marley, a vinyl dance floor used in many concert halls. That intensity continued into the fall of 2021 when performances resumed and she continued to strive for excellence.

Comparison became the thief of joy for Mearns when she looked around and noticed that half the dancers next to her weren't even born when she started working in the company. She felt pressure to prove herself, and it “hit like a massive brick wall,” Mearns says. “I just had a breakdown, burnout, depression.” Untreated hearing loss didn't help.

Towards the end of the fall 2021 season, Mearns decided to take a break from dancing and seek professional help.

Now reflecting on where the pressure came from, Mearns says it was both self-imposed and the nature of the job. The pressure of being an athlete—and if you're a dancer, of being an artist—means you have to bring all your emotions into the performance. “We have to show it all,” she says.

Plus there was a part of herself that she kept secret for many years. “Now I understand – although I am one of the most expressive, musical and emotional dancers – I was shying away [on stage]“I was only half there,” Mearns says.

When she finally received her first hearing aids in 2024, everything became clearer. “I was walking down Ninth Avenue back to the theater and I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and I started crying because I heard the birds, I heard the flagpole, I heard the wind,” Mearns says. “Hearing the wind was overwhelming to me, as well as people’s shoes on the sidewalk and the volume of the trucks.” (The latter was something she never thought she would welcome, especially since she lives in New York, but she “doesn't care.” Mearns says, “I wanted to hear about it in its entirety.”)

Mearns says she cried for much of that day, thinking, yes, about what she was missing, but more than that, about her new reality. “You don’t have to live in this darkness, in this loneliness, in this lonely place you’ve been in for the last 10 years,” she remembers thinking. “It doesn’t have to exist anymore, and these hearing aids have allowed me to live a better life.”

When Mearns first took the stage as the Sugar Plum Fairy with her hearing aids, that message was further amplified: “I remember during the first part, I walked out and heard someone's footsteps. I could hear the clink of someone's suit backstage. I could hear the conversation that was happening backstage while I was on stage. like, “Wait, I haven’t heard that in 10 years.”

She immediately realized: “This is a new chapter. This is the start of something amazing and my world will open up again.” And with the second season of The Nutcracker under his belt, Mearns says the transformation in mind and body is undeniable. “In the studio I feel even more open, not as closed, not as shy, I don’t feel like I’m wearing a mask, I don’t feel like I’m hiding anything,” she says. “I feel like I have superpowers. Sometimes it even seems to me that I can hear things that other people cannot.”

Alexis Jones (she/her) is the head of health and fitness at Popsugar, overseeing coverage on the website, social media and newsletters. With more than seven years of editorial experience, Alexis has developed a passion and knowledge in the areas of mental health, women's health and fitness, racial and ethnic health disparities, and chronic disease. Before joining PS, she was a senior editor at Health magazine. Her other original articles can be found in the magazines Women's Health, Prevention, Marie Claire and others.