The second time I saw Megan Fairchild dance was my partner’s second time seeing a ballet: “Nutcracker,” 2025. Despite frequenting the opera across the plaza, he’d never been to a ballet until I’d taken him to see Sara Mearns and Tyler Angle in “Swan Lake” earlier that year. I had spent my childhood dreaming of seeing these dancers, and he was seeing them on his first encounter with the art. My last “Nutcracker” in high school was my last time performing, and I’d only seen it professionally one other time in San Francisco, so nostalgia was not in short supply—though I didn’t miss the stage. Mine was a missing of studio windows foggy with body heat against the early fall nights, barres draped with plastic pants and sweaters, ears warm with waltzes coming in loud through speakers and directions from teachers to all lift our arms at the same swell of instruments and to notice the patterns between our crossings. I missed the humming between us girls as we speculated which tutu we’d be granted the privilege of wearing, calling each costume and each other beautiful as we stretched our feet. These days, I often drop my eyes shut and pull myself deep within my body to feel the strong reaching my muscles once practiced routinely, placing each bone in precise relationship with the rest of my skeleton. I felt that inward pull at the “Nutcracker” as I watched the Snow Scene and the Waltz of the Flowers and the Mirlitons. But when Megan stepped onstage to dance Sugar Plum, every bit of feeling in my body was pulled towards her presence. Watching her, I felt not what my body used to do but what my body could never do—that is the gift she and all other dancers give me. In watching her balance and stretch and leap and turn in a body perfectly gifted and trained and practiced, I felt a longing and a gratitude for the particular freedom and fierceness I would never embody myself.