Covid-19 pandemic pause leads to baby boom among dancers

NEW YORK - At the beginning of the pandemic, one of Megan Fairchild's former dance teachers gave her some advice: Now would be a really great time to get pregnant.

Fairchild, a principal at New York City Ballet, was aghast. "I was like, that's a ridiculous idea and the last thing on my mind right now," she said. "This is going to last a couple of months, and I don't want to not be there when we get back."

But as days turned into weeks and months, she began to experience another emotion: anger. It was clear that her kind of live performance, dancing for thousands at Lincoln Centre, would not be resuming anytime soon.

Fairchild always wanted to give her young daughter a sibling so that she could experience a relationship like she has with her dancer-brother, Robbie Fairchild. She did the math. The pandemic pause plus another pregnancy, if they did not overlap, would add up to 2½ years off the stage.

"It started to make me super mad about the fact that I have to take a full year off from my career - my short career already - as the woman in the parenting situation to bring a child into the world."

For much of the pandemic year, Fairchild, 36, was pregnant. On April 10, she gave birth to twin girls. The decision to have another child came to her in three words when she was meditating: Do it now.

"I didn't think I was ready, but the idea of just doing it now kind of solved all my problems."

Now Fairchild is irritated that she wasted so much time. "I wish I got pregnant in March!" she said.

She is not the only one to have taken advantage of the theatrical shutdown. The dance world is experiencing a full-blown baby boom.

"This has just been something to lift us up and give us new energy," said Brittany Pollack, 32, a City Ballet soloist, who is expecting a girl in September with her husband, Jonathan Stafford, the company's artistic director.

A dance career is relatively short, and so is the window for a dancer to have a child. It usually happens later in a career when stage credits or time with a company is already established.

So while the baby boom is a joyful outcome to a terrible situation, it also brings to light the real struggle that many dancers, particularly women, face in deciding whether and when to start a family.

"It's like, the world's ending," Heather Lang, a cast member of Broadway musical Jagged Little Pill, said. "Here you go, here's your chance."

The pandemic has afforded dancers, including Lang, who had her second child during the shutdown, something rare: time to be away from performing and then to get back into dancing shape.

"I don't have to sacrifice another year of contemplating, should I stop now?" said Erica Pereira, a soloist at City Ballet who is pregnant. "Should I have the baby? It's like a blessing in disguise."

The roster of new and expecting mothers bears this out: In recent weeks, Ingrid Silva of Dance Theatre of Harlem; Teresa Reichlen of City Ballet; and Stephanie Williams and Zhong-Jing Fang of American Ballet Theatre have had babies.

Ballet Theatre's Lauren Post, who has a young daughter, is pregnant with a boy. Justin Peck, the resident choreographer and artistic adviser of City Ballet, and his wife, dancer Patricia Delgado, welcomed a daughter on March 29.

And the phenomenon extends beyond New York. The Royal Ballet in London has also seen a baby boom.

At the start of the pandemic, Reichlen, 36, a principal at City Ballet, decided to take three months off dancing. She had not had a break in 20 years. Then, when those three months were over, she found out she was pregnant.

She tried to keep up her training, like others in the company, by dancing in her living room. "To be perfectly honest, I hated that," she said. "It's just terrible."

Now that her son is born, she is grateful that she has had time to pace herself as she gets back into shape. But with or without a baby, the landscape of the company will have changed and that cannot help but affect her dancing too.

Post, who said she dealt with postpartum mood disorder and depression after her first pregnancy, has been documenting her current one on Instagram to show that there are ups and downs.

She said before having her first child, she was naive and thought, "Oh, I'll have a newborn, it's going to be magical and so sweet."

The reality hit her hard. "Your entire life changes overnight," she said, "and all of a sudden I didn't have my job. I didn't have my friends in the way that I was used to. It's a whole physical and emotional toll that I think could be more supported."