Liu, who was born and raised in China, is hardly the first professional ballet dancer to appear on stage while pregnant. However, she has become a very visible one lately thanks to her appearances in Boston Ballet’s performances in late 2025 — first November’s run of George Balanchine’s “Jewels,” then Mikko Nissinen’s “The Nutcracker” — as well as the short day-in-the-life montages she has been posting on Instagram. Here she gets an ultrasound, there she takes a backstage costume selfie. Her husband, Boston Ballet principal dancer Yue Shi, lifts her above his head with her baby bump proudly on display.
Chenxin Liu and Daniel R. Durrett in George Balanchine’s “Jewels” in November 2025, when Liu was four months pregnant.Liza Voll
Professional ballet careers tend to begin in the late teens or early 20s and end in the mid-30s or early 40s at the latest, overlapping almost entirely with the years during which most people choose whether to pursue parenthood. And though having a baby and being a ballerina are no longer considered as mutually exclusive as they were in the mid-20th century, when prominent dancers were known to conceal pregnancies for months, the physical demands placed on professional dancers pose inherent challenges to pregnant women.
Even before the pregnancy starts to show, the fatigue, nausea, and other common effects of the first trimester can be especially debilitating. On days without performances, Boston Ballet’s dancers usually rehearse and practice for almost nine hours a day. “To keep pushing through, having the energy to be on stage and keep your fitness, can be very hard,” said Boston Ballet director of physical therapy Alex Howard, a trained dancer and the mother of three children.
At around six weeks of pregnancy, the body begins to release the hormone relaxin, which gradually loosens the joints, muscles, and ligaments in preparation for delivery. “A lot of dancers are already hypermobile, or have acquired a lot of mobility through their training,” Howard explained. With the added effects of relaxin, they might feel that they “can’t hold it all together anymore” while doing splits or squats. Then, when the uterus lifts out of the pelvic rim and the fetus grows, instead of having the core “stacked,” said Howard, “there’s a chunk of weight on the front of your body.” The ribs flare out, and the center of gravity shifts.
Postpartum recovery can also be a complex and lengthy process as the dancer rebuilds core strength and stability, Howard added. “It’s common for a dancer to come back after six months and be rehearsing, but they might not feel performance-ready for a while.” All this adds up to the idea that “if you choose to have a baby, you’re basically pausing your career,” said Howard.
Earlier in her career as a stage manager, Boston Ballet company manager Veronica Horne got the impression that for dancers, “having a child was something that you did at the end of your career,” because if they took a hiatus from the stage earlier, “it’d be harder to come back from it.”
Boston Ballet principal dancer Seo Hye Han put it more bluntly: “No one really tries [to have a baby] while they’re still on stage.”
Han, who joined the company in 2012 and was promoted to principal in 2016, said she always wanted to have a baby while she was young; her own mother had her at 25. “But because of my job, it was hard,” she said. She has commiserated with other dancers who yearn to become mothers, she said, but many feel they need to wait until they’ve landed a principal or soloist position at a company and can rely on the job security that brings.
Han was already off her feet recovering from an injury when the pandemic closed dance studios and theaters in March 2020. With no return to her regular routine in sight, she saw an opportunity. Her daughter was born in April 2021, amid what The New York Times called a “full-blown baby boom” in the dance world as many professional dancers decided to start or expand their families, knowing that they weren’t risking time they would have otherwise spent on stage.
Boston Ballet principal dancer Seo Hye Han, who gave birth to a daughter in 2021, dancing in Mikko Nissinen’s “The Nutcracker” in 2025.Brooke Trisolini
However, Han’s path back to the stage still wasn’t without its roadblocks. Initial medical screenings showed that her baby daughter might have a rare and potentially life-threatening genetic condition, which required Han to feed the baby on a rigid round-the-clock schedule and bring her to numerous medical appointments before doctors confirmed that the test had been a false positive. Han also struggled with postpartum depression.
“I wanted to push myself, because that’s what I do,” she said, but she “wasn’t really happy” when she returned to the studio — first in late summer 2021, then several months later after undergoing surgery for her injury. She was anxious about professional consequences she might experience as a result of her longer-than-expected recovery, and she didn’t feel “fully confident” on stage until at least two years after her daughter was born.
But dancers are much more likely to feel positive about pursuing motherhood if there are other mothers in the ranks of the dance company and the leadership team, Han said. “Ming [Min Hui], the executive director, had a baby. [Company manager] Veronica [Horne] is also a mom, and she’s amazing,” Han said. “They understand the cycles. They understand what life is like, being a mother.”
This past summer, several dancers in the ballet and contemporary spheres spoke to Elle Magazine about career difficulties they’d faced when they were either pregnant or postpartum. One felt like she’d been forced onto unpaid leave when she couldn’t afford it. Many noticed a lack of protections for parents in union contracts, which vary by company.
Boston Ballet dancers are members of the American Guild of Musical Artists, and the company and union negotiated a new contract this summer with reinforced protection for new parents. Through a combination of the new contract and Massachusetts’s paid family medical leave, pregnant dancers can be “paid in full throughout their entire pregnancy,” instead of “having to worry about, like, ‘oh, OK, if I stop dancing now, then, you know, I only have this much pay remaining,’” Horne said.
The contract also includes provisions for bonding leave for non-birthing parents: those whose partners give birth, or who adopt children. “The industry is making space for parents, and I think it’s going in the right direction,” Horne said.
Boston Ballet second soloist Chenxin Liu, five months pregnant, takes a selfie in costume as Clara’s Mother backstage at the Citizens Opera House during December’s run of “The Nutcracker.”Chenxin Liu
Liu and Shi are expecting their baby boy in April, and at this point in Liu’s pregnancy, “every day is different … every week, I have a new center of gravity,” she said. “Everything I do is under the guidance of my OB and the PT staff.” While rehearsing and performing for “Jewels” and “Nutcracker,” the company checked in with her every couple of days to see how she was feeling about the work she had been assigned. On Dec. 6, at 21 weeks pregnant, she danced in the “Waltz of the Flowers” in “Nutcracker,” which she decided would be her last performance in pointe shoes until after the baby comes.
For the rest of the run, which ended on Dec. 28, she danced in flat slippers in the roles of the Governess and Clara’s mother. She had to reassure the men who danced with her that they weren’t going to hurt her or the baby when they touched her abdomen, she said, giggling. “They got so scared. They were like, ‘Oh my God, I’m nervous.’ And I was like, ‘It’s fine! [The baby] is strong! Don’t worry!”
Now, she’s just trying to maintain her form as much as possible. If she feels up to it and her doctors give her the go-ahead, she wants to dance in Crystal Pite’s 54-person contemporary ballet “The Seasons’ Canon” in March’s Winter Experience program. “Alex [Howard] is giving me training to be part of that dance,” she said.
And after the baby comes? “I told [my husband], my first meal is going to be a sushi boat.”
A.Z. Madonna can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @knitandlisten.
