Life was anything but easy growing up on Cutler Street during the early 1940s. At the time, the bustling street in Schenectady’s Mont Pleasant neighborhood was crowded with low-income and immigrant families. Poverty was common, and there was seldom time to do anything but work.
It was only Megan Fairchild’s first year in the corps de ballet. But Peter Martins, ballet master in chief at New York City Ballet, could see her spark.
So when principal dancers Alexandra Ansanelli and Jenifer Ringer were sent home with injuries, he tapped the fledgling Fairchild for the lead role in “Coppelia.” With only a few rehearsals with ballet mistress Merrill Ashley and a stack of notes, Fairchild danced all of the performances of “Coppelia” at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center that summer — including two in one day. Posted on July 2, 2009.
In 1974, Alexandra Danilova restaged, from memory, much of New York City Ballet’s “Coppelia.” Here, she rehearses with ballerina Patricia McBride and Helgi Tomasson.
Swanhilda, danced by Megan Fairchild, tricks the old toymaker, Dr. Coppelius, danced by Robert LaFosse, into thinking his favorite doll has come to life.
Megan Fairchild dances with Joaquin de Luz in New York City Ballet’s production of “Coppelia,” which will be performed at Saratoga Performing Arts Center during the second week of its stay.
The final tableau in the third act of “Coppelia” features the flush and ebullient Megan Fairchild, as Swanhilda, sitting on the shoulders of Joaquin de Luz, as Frantz.
