The demands of a dance career can make family planning especially difficult. Dancers’ bodies are literally their jobs; dance schedules and finances can be inconsistent. In the U.S., the recent wave of abortion bans and restrictions, and the possibility of more constraints on reproductive health services like birth control or in vitro fertilization, have further complicated these decisions. Some queer and trans people are wondering if their legal rights to form families could be in jeopardy.
Here’s how six performing artists have navigated family planning choices.
Emily Johnson and IV Castellanos
Choreographer Emily Johnson began taking steps toward in vitro fertilization in 2016, when she was single. Then, in 2020 and 2021, she grew close to performance artist and sculptor IV Castellanos. Once the two decided they wanted to have a family, as a queer couple, “even the process of bringing a child into our life was a consideration of money,” says Johnson. Getting pregnant turned out to be difficult, which took her by surprise. “As a dancer…I had not even considered that my body would have a hard time doing something,” she says. But, eventually, she did get pregnant, and gave birth in 2023. Johnson and Castellanos are normalizing parenthood in their artistic spaces, bringing their baby with them, and carving out or requesting necessary accommodations.
Emily Johnson performing pregnant in her work Being Future Being: Land/Celestial. Courtesy Johnson.
When it comes to IVF, Castellanos says that body-based artists have the advantage of knowing how to maintain routines and prepare for physical challenges. Strong community support is another crucial need, Castellanos adds. Experiences with the medical system can be dehumanizing, says Castellanos, and even in New York City, “we didn’t see one other queer couple in our whole entire medical experience.” It’s important for marginalized artists considering IVF or similar processes to be mentally prepared for such experiences, they say, and to be familiar with local laws and ensure they are in a safe place. “Don’t let anybody take your power,” Castellanos says. “Hold your space and make your family.”
“Ellen”*
In 2021, Ellen, a freelance dancer in New York City, stopped taking hormonal birth control because she wasn’t happy with the side effects. She switched to an app that helps users track their menstrual cycles and identify the days on which they’re likely to become pregnant. One month, on the very first day the app told her she could be fertile, she thought it would probably still be safe to have sex with her partner without protection. She got pregnant.
Ultimately, Ellen and her partner decided she should have an abortion. But Ellen was about to leave town for a two-week job, so she had to wait, struggling to learn choreography in an anxious haze. Ellen’s partner, also a professional performer, was able to be with her on the day of her abortion but was away for a residency the rest of the summer. “I was so lonely,” she says. It also took her time to open up to others.
Ellen asked to use a pseudonym for this story in part because she doesn’t want her family to know about her abortion. “I remember my mom telling me that if I ever had an abortion not to tell her, because she’d have to disown me,” Ellen says.
Though abortion was the right decision for Ellen at the time, she was surprised by the pull she felt toward motherhood. “It’s almost like, having had the experience, I can’t go backwards,” she says. She does want children someday, but “I don’t want to give up my career,” she says. Logistically and financially, she and her partner feel at least one of them would have to take on a more stable job to become parents.
Ellen is considering pursuing a master’s degree that would allow her to teach at a college level, or going to physical therapy school. But she’s not ready to leave the stage yet, and she worries that taking time off to have a child could end her performance career prematurely. “In dance, if you’re not physically in the room doing the work all the time, people forget you exist,” she says.
Sarah Kay Marchetti
Dancer Sarah Kay Marchetti while she was pregnant with her son. Photo by Jon Taylor, Courtesy Marchetti.
Sarah Kay Marchetti has had a long and varied career, dancing on national and international tours of Broadway musicals and with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet and the ensemble at the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. After she married her husband, singer and actor Chris Gleim, the two realized they wanted to be parents. But by that time, Marchetti was in her late 30s. “As a dancer, you feel so young,” she says. “It’s strange to realize, Wait a second, in some ways I’m not.”
Marchetti points out that even the better health insurance that’s available to dancers through union gigs often doesn’t cover fertility treatments or IVF. “You’re in this career that tells you to wait, and wait, and wait, but then you’ve waited so long that you need help, and then that help isn’t there,” she says. It was only through a side gig as a fitness instructor that Marchetti was able to get insurance that would cover fertility treatments. Even so, after multiple cycles of egg retrieval, Marchetti and her husband ended up with just two viable embryos. The first embryo transfer was unsuccessful. Finally, on her last try and her last embryo, Marchetti got pregnant. She gave birth to a son in 2022, at age 41.
Marchetti’s pregnancy was complicated, and the recovery process was difficult, especially with the added pressure she felt to “bounce back” as both a dancer and a fitness instructor. But two years later, “I think I have more appreciation for my body, and I take care of it, I think, even better now,” she says. She worries for dancers navigating pregnancy and fertility treatments while touring or performing in regional productions in states where abortion is banned. “If a woman is in a show and suffers a miscarriage there,” she says, “will the theater help her?”
Laura Tisserand
Though the idea of a professional ballet dancer having children isn’t as radical as it once may have been, many ballet dancers still wait until retirement, or close to it, to have children. Not Laura Tisserand, who gave birth to her daughters in 2017 and 2020, while she was a principal dancer with Pacific Northwest Ballet. She and her husband, Jérôme Tisserand—also a former PNB principal—are now principal dancers at Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo in Monaco.
Laura says the directors of both PNB and Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo companies have been “fantastic and supportive,” which is part of what made her confident she could have a family alongside her career. “I also just knew I had more dancing left in me and never questioned coming back after having babies,” she adds, noting that support from her husband was also key.
“It is a bit tricky in our line of work to find the ‘right’ time to start a family,” Laura says. But at the same time, there are reasons not to wait. “Most dancers stop dancing in their 40s, or even sooner, so from a financial standpoint it makes sense to start a family when two full paychecks are coming in,” she says. “And having our daughters watch us perform and rehearse is one of the greatest joys in our life.”
Laura Tisserand and Ige Cornelis in Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour. Photo by Alice Blangero, Courtesy Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo.
Esmé Boyce
Dancer and choreographer Esmé Boyce grew up with two artist parents. Their example is part of what made Boyce and her husband, visual artist Chat Travieso, believe that they could build a family without abandoning their creative pursuits. Boyce gave birth to a son in 2021. Though she had a relatively easy pregnancy physically, she struggled with anxiety and sustained birth injuries that took a long time to recover from. “Regaining trust in my body is still a process, even three years out,” she says.
As a choreographer, “making dances is how I make sense of the world,” says Boyce. So when she was ready to return to the stage, she wanted to bring motherhood there with her. The result was a piece called The Humbling or Chapter of Mama: Part 1, in which her son and the two children of dancer Caroline Fermin were onstage for the entire performance. The audience was also a welcoming space for kids, allowing them to move and make noise.
“The idea was that the dance has to be very flexible, because the children’s needs come first,” says Boyce. “We asked the audience to be okay with a meltdown in the corner, if that’s what’s happening, or a diaper change off to the side.” Boyce and Fermin’s husbands were onstage too. “I wanted to show my husband caretaking, and not make a big deal about that because it’s a normal thing,” despite what traditional gender roles might dictate, she says.
Boyce says the experimental work was only made possible by the fact that presenters and funders saw it as valuable. In order for dancers to have more freedom in their reproductive choices, says Boyce, “our whole system has to shift.”
Boyce (center), with son Tahlo, rehearsing The Humbling or Chapter of Mama: Part 1. Courtesy Boyce.
*Name has been changed.
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