Megan Fairchild, a principal dancer at New York City Ballet, took a break from dancing Balanchine when she took on the role of Ivy Smith in the 2014 Broadway revival of On the Town. She's now back to ballet full-time, and having just completed NYCB's 2015-16 season, is prepping for a one-night-only concert performance of Finian's Rainbow with Irish Repertory Theatre. We caught up with her about her love for musicals, her dream role at NYCB, and who she's rooting for at the Tony Awards this weekend.

While you were performing in On the Town last year, your brother, Robert, was playing the lead in An American in Paris.  Am I right thinking that musicals played a big part in your life growing up? 

They did! My parents always had a subscription to whatever Broadway tours were coming to the Capital Theater in Salt Lake City. We have tons of playbills from the shows, and after our time on Broadway, my mom looked back and realized we saw people we know now! My favorite playbill find is Josh Bergasse in West Side Story when it came to Utah. I died when my mom told me that! It is such a small world, and you never know where life will lead you. Also, my grandpa owned a box set of MGM classics that we would watch when we visited every Christmas. Oklahoma!, The King and I, Seven Brides and Singin' in the Rain… Singin' in the Rain quickly became a family favorite.

I'm curious about how you stayed in ballet-shape while you were performing on Broadway - you would have been performing a lot more than usual and rehearsing less.  Was it a hard transition on your body? And what was it like mentally transitioning back to ballet after the show closed?

I took it as a chance to detox a little bit from the way ballet pulls on my body, specifically some chronic pain I was having from pointe work. So I took most of the year off pointe. And I found it too exhausting to take the daily ballet class, so I averaged one ballet class a week and then the other days I did my own barre at the Lyric before our show. I must have done 500 ballet barres that year, all on my own. Ballet is more fun when you do the grueling part together, so that got a little old, having to push myself. Outside of that, I did Gyrotonics and Pilates once a week with private trainers, and I saw my chiropractor twice a week. That was crucial, because I was doing the same thing every night. The same arabesque, etc. Then towards the end of my run, I really started to retrain my ballet again and joined the School of American Ballet summer course classes, and took in pointe shoes every day for about a month.

Mentally I found transitioning back to ballet such a breath of fresh air! It was like, oh yeah, I am good at this, and the perfection part of ballet felt really good on my body. Doing the Broadway show every night, the emphasis becomes more on the entertaining factor, and maybe not the perfection aspect. So to take ballet class and rehearse in a very conscious, organized way, where I got to really place my body properly, and dance on a proper ballet floor again, just felt amazing. But if I hadn’t taken that year away from it, I would never have had such a moment of rebirth. 

You had some great rep during the spring season at NYCB, which just ended last week -- Rubies, Ballo della Regina, Dances at a Gathering, and Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, among others! What was your favorite piece to dance?

I think Ballo will always be close to my heart, even though it sometimes hurts a lot, and drives me crazy mentally because it was one of the ballets I did with the School of American Ballet growing up. I do the same ballerina role today with the company that I did in the school when I was 17. Having an attachment like that to a ballet always makes it mean a lot every time you approach the role. And the last time it was performed by NYCB was 7 or 8 years ago, so it was really nice to revisit. It also is right up my alley in terms of my strengths as a dancer, so it is fun to tackle. 

Are there any roles in NYCB's rep that you'd love to get the chance to perform? Or choreographers you would like to work with?

I would love to work more with Ratmansky, he always brings something out of you in your dancing that you didn’t know existed. Which can be a scary process because he pushes you, but he does it in the most inspiring, positive way. He is just one of those incredibly talented, but also equally nice, men. Every time I meet someone that is so intensely both of those things, I just have the best time in the rehearsal process. In terms of things that are already choreographed that I have my eye set on? I am DYING to do the ballerina role in Jerome Robbin’s The Concert. I spent a year with comedians and actors on Broadway, and I think I have become addicted to hearing the audience laugh. It’s the most satisfying noise. 

I was so pleased to see that NYCB has commissioned two new works by female choreographers for the 2016-17 season, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and NYCB's own principal dancer, Lauren Lovette. Do you have any thoughts on the disparity between female/male choreographers in the ballet world?

I don’t think it is the way it is because women aren’t given the opportunity. A female dancer at NYCB has every opportunity afforded to her that someone like Justin Peck had. They just haven’t taken our boss up on the opportunity. We have a great grooming ground for young choreographers called the New York Choreographic Institute. And it is open to all students and dancers at NYCB as well as others that apply outside. And Peter Martins is open to anyone testing out this talent in themselves. I truly think it is a chicken/egg situation. I think it is more an issue of lack of female role models in the field. Also, we are always thinking of the life we will make for ourselves when we are done dancing, and women often find an easy fit as teachers because of their maternal natures. Maybe this also explains the difference. Men find a future home in the industry in a different way. There is also something interesting about women being the men’s muses when they choreograph. I have nothing against female choreographers, but I do like that a male choreographer would like to highlight what is beautiful about a woman. “Ballet is woman,” Balanchine said. I love that dynamic. Haha!!!

Tell us about your role in Finian's Rainbow, Susan the Silent. Were you already familiar with the musical when you were asked to dance in it?

I wasn’t familiar with the musical even. So this is all new to me!!! I can’t wait to be a part of it! And I love that I get to express myself through dance. Kind of what I specialize in. 😉

Not sure how much you get to see live theater with your busy schedule! But do you have any Tony favorites you're rooting for?

Not that they need my support but, I am a super fan of Hamilton - duh. And I love Fiddler. Really rooting for Danny [Burstein].