The Brooklyn Rail

Sara Mearns, a principal with New York City Ballet, happens to be one of the finest ballerinas of our time. Her every moment onstage pushes the art’s standards and adds underlying depth to even abstract dances. This passion can lead a viewer to doubt her ability to safely complete a difficult passage—will she fall? How can she stay upright?—but by jove, she does it. This air of tension and daring only adds to the whole Sara Mearns ballet experience, plus bulks up the by-now huge pile of expectations.

We plebes can only imagine what that pressure must feel like over the course of, at this point, seventeen years as a principal, some of which have been clouded over by injuries and other health issues. While the company is vast, with its corps members who often flood the stage to create visual arrays and support the featured performers, in the end, if you’re a principal, you are truly reliant on yourself and your partner. And, as Sara has mentioned in interviews in so many words, choreographers are thrilled to set work on her—a star—and thus she’s usually framed, like a prized diamond in a tiara.

So it must have elicited a huge, oxygen-filled breath to be invited by New York City Center to curate an Artists at the Center program. This recurring series features an artist collaborating with other talented artists, creating new work that can fall outside the precisely carved path of, in this case, classical ballet. For Mearns, it was a chance to flex her theatrical muscles in the dance/drama Don’t Go Home, with concept by Mearns, Guillaume Côté, and Jonathon Young, directed by the latter two. Touching on work/life division and how one can deeply, at times negatively, affect the other, Mearns is trying to find a way into playing a character named Claire. She wanders on stage casually, stretching, seemingly directionless, saying “I don’t know where to go,” while a voice over (The Director) asks, “What are you doing here?”

In toe shoes, she loosely marks some movement phrases, retreating to the familiar embrace of dance, yet not fully committed. Mid-century modern furnishings sit upstage, denoting the residence she once shared with her ex, a character danced by Gilbert Bolden III. Bolden III is a magnetic presence who is frequently cast with Mearns at New York City Ballet, and who serves as her emotional foil. Some elements make handy metaphors: the door (transitions, passages), a lounge chair (lethargy, surrender), and an old-fashioned telephone (the incursion of the outside world).

The staging, projected section titles, and voiceovers are meant to be dramaturgically helpful and add some levity, but they ultimately confuse and distract from her search for herself through dance. Self-doubt seeps in as she sketches out more dance phrases, infusing them with gusto, finally saying “There she is! No…,” finding and then losing the thread. She exclaims “This, not that,” searching for the heart that once drove her dancing while patting her actual heart. The quest to find a balance between life onstage and off mirrors reality, offering a glimpse of the complicated life of an artist.

For the second half of the evening, Jamar Roberts created Dance Is A Mother to music by Caroline Shaw. In addition to Mearns, the cast included Anna Greenberg, Ghrai DeVore-Stokes, Jeroboam Bozeman, and Roberts; the last three are alumni of Alvin Ailey American Dance Company, with Roberts serving as that troupe’s resident choreographer from 2019 to 2022. Mearns had expressed a wish to be part of a group and to not be the star, which turns out to be the lush and captivating Roberts (even if he shares Mearns’s desire to not be the focus). The cast often moves together, and of course breaks into pairs or solos. In a highlight, Roberts and Bozeman perform a powerful, yet delicate, side-by-side duet—two strong movers balancing one another. Roberts’s pleasing modern style flows along, with such occasional dynamically-heightened sections providing bursts of energy.

Caroline Shaw’s music contributes a fascinating aural setting, with melodic experiments and lilting vocals that span early music to the present. The quartet sits onstage; in the second section, Raquel Acevedo Klein roams among the dancers as she sings in a clear, flute-like voice. Marc Happel designed the celadon-hued tunics, pants, and socks. The dance succeeded in integrating Mearns into the group, though she did seem to reflexively express more emotion than the others.

Artists at the Center, led by Stanford Makishi, City Center’s VP & Artistic Director for dance, provides a unique chance for dancers/choreographers to use new muscles. Will this program satisfy balletomanes who flocked to see this star of our generation as she experiments and expands her portfolio? Whatever the answer, Mearns has earned the chance to breathe and grow. Some will want more of what made her a luminary, but plenty of viewers applauded heartily.