{"id":19414,"date":"2025-01-06T16:23:21","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T17:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=19414"},"modified":"2025-01-06T17:25:37","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T17:25:37","slug":"a-ballerina-prized-for-her-musicality-deals-with-hearing-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=19414","title":{"rendered":"A Ballerina Prized for Her Musicality Deals With Hearing Loss"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sara Mearns, the New York City Ballet principal, announced her 10-year struggle on Instagram. She tested out her new hearing aids in \u201cThe Nutcracker.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Sara Mearns stepped onto the stage as the Sugarplum Fairy wearing something more precious than a jewel-encrusted tiara. In her ears, invisible to all, were hearing aids.<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard every single noise possible,\u201d she said. \u201cBackstage, onstage. The shoes on the stage sounded like cymbals in my ears. The music was so loud. The audience was ridiculously loud. Everything was magnified. It almost sounds artificial. I\u2019m like, is it really like this? Is this real<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been only three weeks since Mearns, 38, was fitted with semi-permanent hearing aids and one week since she stepped back into the role of Sugarplum in \u201cGeorge Balanchine\u2019s The Nutcracker\u201d for the first time since 2020. Her first performance, on Dec. 30, was shaky, she said. But on Friday night, her second \u2014 sensitive and seamless \u2014 \u201cthe feelings came back of Oh, you know how to do this,\u201d Mearns said in an interview. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing you need to worry about. You just need to go out there and enjoy yourself and be yourself and command the stage, and I really did feel like myself again.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mearns as the Sugarplum Fairy in \u201cThe Nutcracker\u201d on Dec. 30, her first performance with her new hearing aids.<\/span>Erin Baiano<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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In videos posted to Instagram<\/a> stories before those shows, Mearns, the acclaimed, musically penetrating New York City Ballet principal, spoke about coping with hearing loss for the past 10 years. \u201cI won\u2019t miss entrances anymore or not hear the music,\u201d she said on Instagram, \u201cor have to ask the pianist to play louder or have them turn the monitors up.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She was able to hear things she hadn\u2019t heard in years. Chirping birds. Wind. Clicking shoes. \u201cI was just bawling walking down the street,\u201d she said of her trek to her Lincoln Center dressing room where she filmed the videos.<\/p>\n

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Sara Mearns, the New York City Ballet principal, announced her 10-year struggle on Instagram. She tested out her new hearing aids in \u201cThe Nutcracker.\u201dSara Mearns stepped onto the stage as the Sugarplum Fairy wearing something more precious than a jewel-encrusted tiara. In her ears, invisible to all, were hearing aids.\u201cI heard every single noise possible,\u201d she said. \u201cBackstage, onstage. The shoes on the stage sounded like cymbals in my ears. The music was so loud. The audience was ridiculously loud. Everything was magnified. It almost sounds artificial. I\u2019m like, is it really like this? Is this real?\u201dIt\u2019s been only three weeks since Mearns, 38, was fitted with semi-permanent hearing aids and one week since she stepped back into the role of Sugarplum in \u201cGeorge Balanchine\u2019s The Nutcracker\u201d for the first time since 2020. Her first performance, on Dec. 30, was shaky, she said. But on Friday night, her second \u2014 sensitive and seamless \u2014 \u201cthe feelings came back of Oh, you know how to do this,\u201d Mearns said in an interview. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing you need to worry about. You just need to go out there and enjoy yourself and be yourself and command the stage, and I really did feel like myself again.\u201dMearns as the Sugarplum Fairy in \u201cThe Nutcracker\u201d on Dec. 30, her first performance with her new hearing aids.Erin BaianoIn videos posted to Instagram stories before those shows, Mearns, the acclaimed, musically penetrating New York City Ballet principal, spoke about coping with hearing loss for the past 10 years. \u201cI won\u2019t miss entrances anymore or not hear the music,\u201d she said on Instagram, \u201cor have to ask the pianist to play louder or have them turn the monitors up.\u201dShe was able to hear things she hadn\u2019t heard in years. Chirping birds. Wind. Clicking shoes. \u201cI was just bawling walking down the street,\u201d she said of her trek to her Lincoln Center dressing room where she filmed the videos.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19416,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19414"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19417,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19414\/revisions\/19417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}